


Beauties and Beasts: A Love Story from Paternoster Row

by bluemoonwings



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: England (Country), Eventual Smut, F/F, First Time, Kissing, Lesbians, Paranormal, Post-Serial: s052 The Silurians, Romance Novel, Science Fiction, Sexual Content, Victorian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-29
Updated: 2015-09-29
Packaged: 2018-04-23 22:56:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 38,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4895509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluemoonwings/pseuds/bluemoonwings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jenny Flint comes to work for the mysterious Madame Vastra, and their relationship changes and evolves in different ways. I will build off of this narrative in later stand alone works. I hope to incorporate some fairy tail aspects as well as some deeper, richer development in the characters.</p><p>Slightly AU, but only because I am new to the fandom and my knowledge of the source material is limited. I will try to fit within the canon as much as possible. </p><p>Warning, Madame Vastra does eat people, and there is violence, but not excessive.<br/> </p><p>This is a repost of the original story I began posting a week ago.<br/>It was late at night and something glitched and while I was trying to delete duplicate chapters, I accidentally deleted my whole work!!!!! D: fortunately it was saved so now I will repost the ENTIRE THING. The good news, however, is that this story is now complete.<br/>I will try to keep working on the quality control. Please comment and give me any feedback as I am in a constant revising and refining process. Thank you in advance for your patience and feedback.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Maid

**Author's Note:**

> In this story I should mention beforehand that some terms or descriptions will seem antiquated. This is on purpose in order to place the reader and characters in the correct time period. Many non-English practices will seem at times a bit commercial or visibly Westernized (and perhaps bastardized to a degree) to reflect colonialism, ideas of superiority or even just the times and Jenny's world view. Vastra views the world differently for sure, but she isn't really observing culture so much as she is observing Jenny herself.

Part I

 

The new maid was not working out. Wryly, Madame Vastra grimaced to herself when she realized that there would have needed to have been a previous maid in order for this one to be the “new” maid. In any case, however, the (only) maid, a Miss Jenny Flint, aged sixteen, was not working out.

It was not that Miss Flint had any grossly reprehensible personality traits, nor gaping moral shortcomings. She was acceptably competent at her few menial tasks with which Vastra had trusted her. On a personal level, she was pleasant enough, and not exactly ugly...for a pink ape, of course. No, Vastra was forced to admit with an audible sigh, that their employment arrangement would need to end due to her own personal inflexibilities.

She looked around the spotless, exotically decorated parlor. The furniture was an eclectic yet refreshingly cohesive collection as was the decor. Rising from an exquisitely crafted embroidered silk-upholstered wing back chair, she let her voluminous, deep emerald skirts settle around her before gracefully stepping over to the nearby window, which for privacy, was covered by a thin, sheer, white curtain. It let in light and heat in, which Vastra suddenly craved.

Despite being indoors, she wore a fine bonnet of black velvet and lace, with a veil. For this trait, along with her intellectual keenness, she was handsomely employed by Scotland Yard under the moniker “The Great Veiled Detective of Paternoster Row,” which delighted the somewhat vain madam very much, even if the title was something of a mouthful.

Lost in thought, and for want of more warmth against the unseasonably cool Autumn, she didn't immediately notice someone enter the room behind her.

Miss Jenny Flint, having finished the morning dishes, laundry, and a few menial tasks set to her by her mysterious employer, stood warily at the door. Normally etiquette would have had her subtly announce her presence as the secretive detective hated to feel snuck up upon. Jenny had learned this the hard way on her second day when a razor sharp paring knife had been whipped at her face. The apologies that ensued thereafter had been very few, and nowhere near enough to soothe her frayed nerves, but work was work, and this was generally good work, so she had stayed on.

She raised her hand now to knock on the door frame but was momentarily transfixed by her employer's profile against the light. At this angle, she could see through the veil enough to make out her facial silhouette. Jenny had expected an older woman than what she now discerned. Also, she had long feared that some hideous deformity forced the Madame Vastra into such convent-like privacy. However, this did not seem to be extremely so. Indeed, there was something amiss, perhaps about the shape or texture of the skin, but Jenny couldn't put her finger on it. Rather she was more interested in the mistress's quite, private grace. No one could move as fast, nor become so still that Jenny had ever known.

Though she wished she could impress her cold, though well-meaning employer, Jenny had come to realize over the course of the last few months that Vastra simply did not trust her, even with the meanest emotion, let alone her face. The pay was good, and the room and board even better, not to mention the advantages of having a boss who wasn't abusive. For these reasons, Jenny was resolved to stay on as long as she could, though she had lost hope of ever being particularly appreciated by the enigmatic detective.

 _Curious little ape_ , Vastra thought to herself, having noticed Miss Flint without looking. Primates breathed so loudly and made many unnecessary movements. As soon as she had raised her hand and inhaled, presumably to speak, Vastra had taken notice. She herself was still now, ceasing to breathe as she worked off of the stored oxygen in her lungs, and waited to see what her maid would do.

“Ma'am?” she called out softly at last.

Vastra turned toward her and feigned surprise. “Ah, Miss Flint. What can I do for you?” That wasn't what she had intended to say, but the soft, inquisitive look in her maid's deep brown eyes momentarily bewitched. _Bewitched. What a terribly superstitious word to use_.

Miss Flint wrung her hands around her gray gloves and looked nervous, immediately averting her eyes. “Ma'am,” she began again, more hesitantly.

“Well? Spit it out, Human.” Vastra snapped brusquely, but not in a mean way.

“The chores are done for the day, Ma'am. Shall I get to the shopping or will you want tea already?” Again with the eyes, searching the impenetrable veil for what Vastra had decided to never show, followed by a quick flitting toward the side of her head as if her body refused to allow her to look. Confused little ape. She couldn't even begin to guess why. It might have been amusing to Vastra, but instead it was oddly sad.

“Well I suppose if you'll be gone long, I could use some tea before I begin work,” Vastra sighed, “Alas one can only loaf about so long.” She smiled in spite of herself, forgetting her maid could not see.

“Yes ma'am, I'll get it straight away,” Miss Flint replied, her charmingly thick Cockney accent reminding Vastra of music, more than speech. Then, she was a rushing of skirts and apron as she hurried from the room.

Vastra sat down in her favorite chair again, a little less delicately than she would normally have. Why hadn't she dismissed the poor girl? Surely it was more cruel to drag it out. Yet, Vastra again found herself taking in Miss Flint as she might a financial account or a to-do list.

Decently competent? Check. Acceptable moral character? Check. Not unpleasant? Check. And more. On the rare occasion that Miss Flint's mind had not been carefully guarded, the detective had glimpsed a bit of her mind and found her inner thoughts to have been...kind. Astute even, which was better in her opinion. Was it that carefully walled garden of a mind that made Vastra hesitate to keep her? No, on the contrary, she decided, it was much better to not be plagued by the errant, vapid thoughts of a primate all her waking hours.

No, the detective concluded in her head firmly, the deal breaker was simply that Miss Flint was a simian and could not help herself. She was regrettably but irrevocably too ugly-- that unusually intriguing beauty mark near her mouth notwithstanding-- and smelly for Vastra's reptilian sensibilities to endure. Such soft, _pink_ skin, and so much hair? Ape sweat was the worst in her mind and Vastra thanked her ancient Goddess that she and her race had branched off in their evolution so as to avoid the filth of their Terran cousins.

Miss Flint suddenly appeared again, tea tray and some of her favorite snacks in her hands. “Here you are, Ma'am,” she announced with a curtsy. Vastra was frozen now, looking up at her maid as she began to pour for her. The first thing she noticed was the scent of her. At first she was sure that the sweet floral tea was confusing her, but her senses were much to sharp (or, one might say, highly evolved) for such a mistake. The scent of human was present. Had it not been, it would have been alarming. As it was, it was...not unappetizing. She paused here in her thinking. She regarded the maid in an even more drastically different sense. She was back to her own inflexibilties now, and that was all right. She prided herself in being truly logical even if the situation did not wholly flatter her.

No, she now began to realize that the look of Miss Flint (fairly smooth, fair, innocent), and the smell of her (warm, slightly salty, and a bit sweet), reminded her too acutely of a baby rabbit and as such she was quite the opposite of unappetizing. She was a meal. Vastra let her eyes slip over the delicate curves of Miss Flint's waist and over her hips. Her mouth watered. Indeed. Now she concluded that it was not only “not working out” for her maid, but positively _unsafe_. She would have to be let go now. No doubt.

“Ma'am?” Jenny tried again to see if Madame Vastra required anything more but her mistress was unreadable and statuesque beneath her veil. Then, all at once, she returned to life.

“Bring me another cup,” she commanded, and Jenny rushed to obey without question.

There were many cups in the china cabinet and her mistress normally preferred a white bone china with ivory and emerald filigree. When guests came, as with Scotland Yard's Detective Kent or others, she would have a floral set put out. She hadn't mentioned any guests, so Jenny could only assume that there was something wrong with the green filigree and wanted a replacement. Had she missed a spot while doing dishes? Which one should she bring? She wondered but acted quickly so as not to test Madame Vastra's patience. There was a cup similar to the green one but with navy blue filigree and gold embellishments instead. It would be suitable. She grabbed it, wiped it on her apron just in case, and returned.

“Here, Ma'am,” she presented the cup upon its matching saucer and looked up just in time to see—or imagine she had seen-- a distinct look of shock and ice blue eyes behind the black lace veil. She reached to take the old cup but Madame Vastra moved with a snake-like swiftness that immediately frightened her.

“No Miss Flint,” came her voice now like a hiss, and her long, gloved fingers encircling her wrist right on the bare skin where her sleeve had ridden up. There was a distinct lack of warmth that Jenny noticed but did not interpret. She was distracted by the rush of blood that blasted to her face and made her almost lightheaded. He gaped at her mistress, totally unsure of what to do.

“Sit with me for a change,” came the voice, gentler now. “I didn't mean to startle you. Please do sit.”

Oh dear this wouldn't do. She had totally frightened the poor girl. Looking robotic, Jenny was dropping into a chair opposite her, wary as she had ever seen. Vastra poured tea into her cup in an effort to put her more at ease. It didn't seem to be working. Skittish mammals.

“Well now,” Vastra began in her most soothing voice.

“You aren't going to sack me, are you, Ma'am?” Jenny blurted out before diving into her teacup, cheeks aflame.

The Great Detective stuttered. Yes came to mind but just as soon vanished like so much smoke. “Well, Miss Flint--”

“Jenny, if you please, Ma'am,” she interjected, then blushed even redder and hid behind the rim of her cup.

“Very well, Jenny, how do you find your employment here?” Carefully, she sipped her tea without disturbing her veil. It was very hot, much to her delight.

“I like it very well!” Jenny responded with almost military sharpness. “I count myself lucky indeed, Ma'am.” If her rigid back was uncomfortable, she made no sign.

Vastra cocked her head to one side, both looking at Jenny and trying to see into her mind. The only betrayal of Jenny's emotions were in her posture and those earthy dark eyes. What she met when turning her attention to Jenny's mind was akin to a lightning storm.

Those eyes darted about and then focused on the cup in her hands. She was a prey creature who discerned no escape and had so resolved to fight. When she looked back at Vastra, there was an ember in her gaze. “I would like to help more, Ma'am. I know I don't seem like much, but I can learn anything, and if you don't mind me saying, Ma'am, my reference was...”

“Impeccable I know,” Vastra groaned, thinking of the man who had suggested she employ Jenny. The Doctor, and his whimsical ways. That Doctor to whom she owed as much of her life and comfort as Jenny did. He had been the instrument of their eventual meeting, in fact. To fire Jenny would surely draw the disapproval, if not the ire of the Doctor. Vastra was not too proud to admit that she wished to avoid that. Instead she chose a different tact, noting specifically to blame the Doctor if anything...unhappy ensued from Jenny's continued employment.

“Well Jenny, then what other tasks can you do?” Another sip of tea, another measured breath.

Sensing correctly that she had somehow averted a terrible fate and perhaps stumbled onto a more treacherous path, Jenny considered her words carefully. “Ma'am, most maid servants would help you into your corsets and dress you. I can do that. Got strong knees and forearms, you see.” That stillness was back as if she was a little shocked, so Jenny quickly moved on. “And a lady of your stature shouldn't be wandering the streets alone. I could accompany you to your late meetings--”

“Hah!” chucked the Veiled Detective, “Our first meeting would not suggest I need your protection, Miss Flint, and in fact I rather suspect it suggests the opposite.”

Jenny flinched visibly at this. She had not forgotten her fear at being mugged in an alley, assaulted, nearly violated, and perhaps nearly... She pushed away the thoughts of those men, their drunken laughter, the glint of a knife, and the blows of fists and shoes on her arms, legs, and torso. Her memory came into focus on her rescue instead, which was actually more frightening than the mugging. She didn't even have a clear recollection of it besides Vastra's shadowy form, lithe and quick, a savage, feral hiss, and flashes of sharp claws and teeth. And then blood. Always blood. Then, Vastra carrying her and laying her before their mutual friend, whom Jenny had only recently met at that time, the Doctor. Her imagination ran wild with these memories and she swore that someone had threatened to eat her, if not tonight then certainly tomorrow. Obviously this could not be true, but it still left Jenny with a distinct feeling of helplessness.

“You could teach me?” she suggested then on a whim. That's what the Doctor had told her before writing her a letter of recommendation. He had suggested self-defense lessons, in that funny, non-direct way of his. Jenny grew excited now, sure that she understood what he had meant. “You're a fighter, aren't you, Ma'am? The Doctor seems to treat you like you're a right brawler. If you teach me--”

“Absolutely not! Out of the question entirely,” Vastra cut her off like a knife. “And how uncivilized. If you'd ever seen me fence...brawling _indeed_!”

“I meant no offense, Ma'am.” Jenny cursed her lowborn status.

“And as for my corsets and other such tasks,” Vastra searched for the right words, ignoring her.

“Green.”

“Yes you are quite new, and... I beg your pardon?” Vastra's cold blood seemed to still in her veins. Jenny was unmoving as well but her eyes were wide as saucers and trained directly at her face.

“Green, Ma'am,” Jenny gulped and repeated, “Your skin is actually, well, green.” Despite her obvious surprise, her voice was rather steady and unafraid. It would have seemed funny to Jenny in any other situation. Suddenly, Madame Vastra sitting there, drinking tea with her of all things, without her veil. When had she pulled it away? No matter. Now Jenny couldn't _not_ see her face. She wanted to fixate on the ice blue eyes which were hilariously surprised and surprisingly human, but it was impossible to ignore the fact that Madame Vastra's face was green and scaled like that of a serpent.

The Detective gently, slowly, set down her teacup and put up a hand as if Jenny were a wild animal. The comic irony of this suddenly amused the maid and a bark of a laugh choked its way out of her mouth. “Easy Jenny,” she murmured, soothingly, cautiously, “All of this can be explained.”

Jenny dared not move but kept staring while her brain repeated the same line over and over. _IamworkingforalizardIamworkingforalizardIamworkingforalizard_.

“Are you all right?” Those human eyes and voice were full of concern.

“Just brilliant,” Jenny chirped with confidence, nodding vigorously, just as the room rudely whirled itself sharply clockwise and canted upward at an inhuman speed.

“Oh Hell,” muttered Vastra, who caught her just before she hit the floor.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New readers, I hope you can forgive Jenny for being surprised. She's new to all of this, but it is in learning about, accepting, and growing to like our differences that friendship and more can be born. 
> 
> Old readers, I am so fricking sorry for deleting the original due to my stupidity and lack of sleep! I cannot believe I did this.


	2. Apprentice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jenny begins training under Vastra's draconic tutelage. A hint of affection buds between them.

Part II

 

It had been stupid. Utterly daft. Madame Vastra stormed from one end of her large upstairs bedroom to the other. The room was not lit. Miss Flint, having taken leave of her consciousness, was down in her quarters in bed. Vastra could see in the dark. It had not occurred to her to light the gas lamps or candles as it should have. Rather, she seemed intent on wearing out a piste in the Persian rug that covered the floor.

Never in all her years-- and they were more than she would admit-- had she ever let her mental guard down in such a careless and disastrous manner. The timing could not have been worse. Now what would she do? Miss Flint would certainly leave now, no doubt with truly frightening visions in her head. It wasn't exposure Vastra worried about. She had come well-vetted and was not totally unwise to the ways of other sentient creatures, thanks to the Doctor. It was to this that Vastra attributed her relative calm in the face of, well, her face. She supposed she would have to thank the Doctor for that as well.

Well, mission accomplished, she supposed. Miss Flint had not really been working out and this whole endeavor had been destined to fail. Now she would surely leave on her own and spare Vastra from having to do the chore of dismissing her. Once she had secured the human in her room, she had lit a very mild sleeping incense to help her relax and hopefully stay asleep while Vastra had gone upstairs to deliberate in peace for a few hours. She had already decided to pay Jenny for the rest of the month plus a two-week advance. It was only fair.

It had grown colder in the last hour or two. In fact, it had begun to chap her skin a bit. There was no need to cover her face, she supposed, but she pulled out a wide linen scarf and wrapped it about her bare head, like a kaffiyeh, careful to cover her head ridges, and then her nose and mouth so only her eyes were visible through a narrow space. Much better. She would throw extra logs on the fire downstairs tonight. She doubted Miss Flint would be in the mood, even if she decided to stay the night.

With mixed emotions, Vastra returned to the parlor and opened a case file which she had been asked to peruse.

 

Jenny was running. It felt familiar but worse somehow. Footsteps, heavy and unnatural, landed at her heels. She dared not look back. There was laughter. Malicious dark laughter. Never breaking her pace, she rounded a corner. Her hair pulled free of its pins and streamed into the night like a banner behind her. Why did nothing look familiar? Why was it so dark? She lowered her head and begged her feet for more speed as she fled through the streets praying for a constable.

Fingers like claws snatched at her hair and caused her to stumble, drop her bundle of matches, and rip a gasp from her mouth, but she did not fall. Her feet were screaming in their hard soled, very worn, shoes, but they were still beneath her, so she had a shot.

At last, she saw a street sign, a blur in her teared-up vision as she sprinted by. Paternoster Row. Why was that familiar? She didn't question. She kept going. “Number thirteen, number thirteen,” she gasped, having no idea why. These houses were too large and gated. None could belong to her.

There was heavy fog before her as she sprinted before number eleven. No choice, she figured, and ran toward the next house. A surprise blow from her side put her hard onto the ground, sliding along the road and knocking the wind out of her. No, no, no. Now there were two small groups. In the pale moonlight she could only make out their sharp animal teeth.

The reek of alcohol was in the air along with the odor of unwashed bodies. A few carried weapons, but most were empty-handed. They were laughing and now it sounded like grunting and snarling.

A sharp stone bit her palm. She snatched it up and brandished it like a small knife blade. “Stay back!” she shouted. Her voice hadn't always been so thin and weak, had it?

They fell upon her then. Without hesitation, she jammed the point of the rock into someone's eye, kept her grip on it, pulled it free, and then into a throat. She lashed out at anything she could reach, praying for soft spots. Warm blood spattered over her hand and face. It was black in the darkness.

She screamed and flailed, kicking out with her feet, knees, anything. The blood loosened her grip and in the crowd crush, the stone was lost. She did not pause to mourn it as blows rained down upon her, addling her brain in her skull and bringing nausea from the pit of her stomach. She stayed on her feet as long as she could-- which wasn't very long. Then, she was on her back.

Wordlessly, she shrieked into the merciless night as her rough wool skirts were wrenched and shredded by the force of their grasping. On and on it went, almost forever, and Jenny never stopped fighting. She knew she was losing though. Who would possibly answer the cries of a poor match girl?

She cast her gaze into the mist beyond as hands wrapped around her throat. What laid in wait for her there? She wrenched a blood-soaked hand away from her attackers and desperately reached into the impenetrable haze. What could she possibly do or say now? By what means could she attract her deliverance?

Her joints felt like they were being pulled from their sockets as she thrashed. The pain was clouding her mind. Then, in an instant of slim clarity, she knew what to cry out for. The darkness rushed toward her, swallowing her up with all of her screams.

 

Vastra's book tumbled out of her fingers as a stab of psychic energy lanced through her brain. It was Jenny. Jenny was in trouble. Jenny was screaming, from the intimate depths of her soul for _her_. She didn't have time to figure out how Miss Flint could even accomplish this feat, let alone what was attacking her, so Vastra picked up her skirts as she sprinted toward the servants' quarters near the kitchen, snatching a decorative long sword from above the hearth. She hit the cheap wooden door of the maid's chamber with her non-dominant shoulder and burst into the space beyond.

 

Like coming out of a deep chasm of water, Jenny exploded through the veil of darkness and into the light with a gasp for air the bordered on a screech. Her hands reached out for purchase like a blind man, desperate to live.

“Jenny!” All at once, she was safe and warm in the folds of Madame Vastra's gown. The detective had her face wrapped Arabian-style so that Jenny could not see anything but her eyes. Yet, the familiar strength of her arms encircled her so there could be no mistake. “You are safe,” Vastra murmured into her hair, “I have you.”

Jenny didn't answer. She just cried and cried and didn't notice when Vastra gently probed her mind and surveyed the source of her strife, vowing silently to train the maid into a warrior, starting tomorrow.

 

“I had a dream of you,” Jenny said much later, sitting up in bed as Vastra brought her some left over tea cakes and cider.

“Oh?” Vastra's face was in the shadows as she sat beside Jenny. “I thought I didn't come for you in the dream.”

“No, no not that,” Jenny waved her off as she nibbled on a bite of cake. It had escaped her notice for now that she hadn't told Vastra about her dream. “You were some kind of lizard-woman, and--” she paused, the realization dawning on her. Very slowly, she turned to look at Vastra. “Oh,” was all she said.

“That's how you ended up here in the first place,” her employer informed her evenly.

Jenny realized that though her gloves, shoes, and apron had been carefully laid on the foot board, she was still in her uniform. “Oh my.”

“Is it a problem?” Vastra asked quietly, looking away deliberately.

“No Ma'am, I can change.”

“I didn't mean--”

“Of course you didn't. How stupid of me,” Jenny corrected herself. She picked up the candle that presumably Vastra had lit for her, and went to the gas lamp above her door. She lit it, looked at the splintered remains of her door, and then set the candle back down to look at Vastra. Her eyes asked a question before she raised her hands to the scarf on her mistress's face.

Slowly, Jenny unwrapped her, and a shyness Vastra had never once known enveloped her. She had always seen her veil as a protest, a criticism, of others rather than a thing to hide behind. Apes were unworthy of her visage; too barbaric to simply accept her as she was. She had never trusted them, but now this ape child, this match girl she had found battered in an alley, was looking at her with a determination and intensity that paralyzed her.

Finally, the last bit of cloth slid free and pooled in Jenny's hands. “At last we meet, oh Great Veiled Detective,” she whispered. Her eyes were full of awe.

It wasn't a skin condition at all as she had originally thought. Yes, Madame Vastra was indeed green and scaled, but more than that, she was completely bald, her scalp rising in thee distinctly fin-like ridges that swept from her brow and cheeks backward as if to help her swim. She had tiny notches like a reptile might were her ears seemed to belong. Her eyes were unmistakably human-like, ice blue, and lidded with delicate, gossamer gold-over-green scales. At her cheeks were paler, more defined, and thicker-looking sections, almost like armor, but which defined her face in a very sleek, comely way. Her lips were somewhat thinner than a human's and covered in the same kind of skin s her eyelids.

“Are you a mermaid?” Jenny wondered, now turning Vastra's bare hands in her own.

The detective chuckled in good humor. “No, Miss Flint. If you can believe it, I am a lizard woman from an ancient race. Our people are cousins on the Earth. Same tree, different branches, you might say.” Her voice trailed off as Jenny's warm fingers reached out and touched her cheek. “Ah, it isn't scales exactly,” Vastra continued as Jenny unknowingly brushed along the sensitive gaps in the armor. It was overly intimate for one of her race, but she let it pass for the human. “It's more like skin. Like a lizard, more than a snake, but kind of in the middle.”

“I see. Just skin. Good heavens.” Jenny murmured as she examined the hands again. The nails had been daintily filed but thick, sharp, and shiny as polished obsidian. The palms were almost the same color as Jenny's and about as smooth. The tops and knuckles were green and armored. They were cool and dry like a snake. “How peculiar.” Raising her eyes to Vastra's she seemed to search her whole self. “What are your people called, Ma'am?”

Vastra hesitated, wondering if this simian child could really be worthy of uttering the name of her proud race. The look of her countenance was unchanged, however, and held only wonder, devoid of fear or disgust. “We are called Silurians.”

Jenny repeated the word under her breath many times as if tasting the term. “I shan't forget. Are they all...like you?”

This drew an arched brow from Vastra. “Green? Yes.”

“No, silly. Are they all smart? Warrior-like? Are you considered, I don't know, exceptional?” Jenny flopped her hand in the air trying to illustrate somehow, and gave up.

A smile now. Vastra felt a little door inside her heart ease slightly open. “I am only exceptional in that I live among you now. Many of my sisters and elders are fiercer warriors and wise scholars. They slumber beneath the Earth's crust.”

“I should like very much if you would accept me as at student, Ma'am,” Jenny pleaded, :If this is what you feared to trust me with, fear no more. Let me indenture myself to you, so I can be like you.”

Vastra laughed at this ludicrous idea. An ape, match a Silurian in fighting prowess or deduction? Truly laughable indeed. Yet again, there was something about Miss Flint that defied her perceptions. She was loathe to admit it, but perhaps it would amount to an amusing past time. “Fine, if that is your earnest wish,” she sighed in acquiescence, noting the human's exuberant, victorious gasp. She rose then. “But, my good maid, know that you brought this upon yourself, and as such you may rise one hour earlier each day now.”

“For what, Ma'am?”

Vastra had almost made it to the door when she turned back with a sly grin as she tucked her scarf into the door frame to serve as a covering there. “What else, Miss Flint? To cinch my corset of course.”

 

The corset-cinching seemed further and further from reality. In the days, weeks, and months that followed, Vastra became positively tyrannical in her instruction of her new apprentice. They rose early, together now, and sprinted out to the open fields of the old game park that the Queen still owned but barely used. There they ran in the wee hours of the morning.

Jenny was fit for a human, but her lung capacity was a poor match for Vastra's. The Silurian seemed to be a bottomless pit of both oxygen and energy, keeping her sprinting even when Jenny expired. Too often, she would pause to vomit up her stomach contents following a difficult run. A ghastly horrific affair, which made the Silurian turn up her nose, but Jenny never faltered, and met her every morning.

Their mid mornings offered little respite for the maid-turned-student. Vastra buried herself in her work, unaffected by their pre-dawn antics, leaving Jenny to complete her chores, which only had increased with the newly born trust the mistress now granted her. There were endless pots of tea to be brewed to satiate Vastra's thirst and addiction to heat and caffeine. She still peeled off sodden borrowed trousers and stuffed herself back into her uniform each morning. Her mistress was intolerant of any show of laziness or slovenliness. Unwilling to let her reputation be tarnished, Jenny now took extra care of her appearance whens he ventured into the market for groceries.

One day, early in their training, Jenny passed a shop that sold suits for wealthier men, and took just a second longer walking by to eye the trousers displayed there. Trousers really! She had never imagined she would wear such things-- it was unseemly-- but Vastra had insisted, saying that she would never run properly in a petticoat. It made Jenny feel worse than naked, and she shivered now at the idea of wearing a man's clothes. Vastra herself wore slightly more skirt-like hakama pants, which were pleated and wide-legged, or harem pants, cuffed tightly at the ankles, but she had had none that would fit Jenny, and could not see why the trousers were so off-putting. This was one of the things she noticed about working for a non-human, even if she was a noblewoman, that she simply could not get her to understand. Training was training though, and she was eager to do so.

When she returned from grocery shopping, there was lunch to be served followed by dinner preparations and studies on etiquette, Silurian customs, meditation, and even other studies guided by an amazing Silurian device called a computer, which was in the form of a sphere which Jenny held in her hands, producing images that were projected into thin air. This revelation of advanced technology in Jenny's modest opinion, was far more faint-worthy than Madame Vastra's bare face. However, now having seen both, she was steeled against any similar shocks in the future. At least she hoped. The trousers had been a close one.

This was the only period of the daylight hours that offered her the luxury of rest or anything closely resembling such. Come the mid afternoon, Vastra was finished with work and she was expected to appear in the greenhouse out back in training clothes (which meant trousers) for combat lessons.

To her dismay on day one, she was told in no uncertain terms that she would not be handling a weapon of any sort for a long time. Rather she was made to sit _seiza_ , with her legs tucked under her, Oriental-style, with her eyes closed, listening to the air for clues. Clues for what? Well, she had learned on that day that she was to dodge or block Vastra who, silent as a snake, would strike her smartly about her person with a willow switch.

“Ow! Not fair!” she had protested petulantly, earning her another swat.

“Your attackers will not wait for you to gain your bearings or adjust in the darkness. Before you deign to swing a sword about, first learn to defend yourself. On your guard!” Vastra's stern words rained down upon her, punctuated by little raps of the switch.

Jenny's fair skin had been a patchwork of black, blue, and red marks by nightfall on that first day and many that followed. It was only at this part of the day that Vastra seemed to show her any tenderness.

“My master was even harsher,” she purred to Jenny later as she smoothed a Silurian medicinal salve over her raw and sore areas. Evidently, Jenny had been too sullen or sore to respond, so Vastra continued. “If you make discipline the heart of your practice, you will achieve more than ever seemed possible before. This medicine will help you to recover quickly but whether or not you face your lessons again tomorrow or the next day is wholly up to you.”

Jenny's eyes were closed as she listened passively to Vastra's mini-sermon each night, normally filled with criticism or wise sayings from her own master. She did not reveal how soothed she felt as the lizard woman's hands, warmed from touching her skin, slowly massaged the fragrant medicine into every aching fiber. It was in moments of this peculiar closeness that Jenny began to learn things that Vastra had not intended.

For instance there was Vastra's own distinct scent. It was a clean, dry, iron-rich smell like the shiny metal of her deadly blades, mixed with a salty tone. It wasn't like sweat. Rather, it was cool, and again, dry. If she had to compare it, she might have likened it to the scent of the fresh dirt she had often collapsed upon during their runs. This, mixed with the medicinal odor, became Jenny's favorite thing to smell, for it meant that Vastra was near, and therefore, all was well.

Another part of the day that Jenny had come to enjoy was dinner. Now they ate together, across a fine hardwood table (for which Jenny was responsible for cleaning). She would observe the dainty,

graceful way that Vastra took every bite, each sip, and smelled every scent She learned just by observing which foods Vastra enjoyed most (meat pies and very rare steaks) and which she liked much less (minestrone soup, or any plain salad of fruit or vegetable).

One night, Jenny worked up the courage to ask, “Are your people carnivores, Ma'am?” breaking the silence.

Vastra sipped a deep red wine that she had poured for herself and not offered to Jenny. “We are omnivores but primarily we do subsist on meat, yes.”

“The price of beef has risen so it is harder to get quality cuts right now,” Jenny sighed, trying to make conversation, while simultaneously apologizing for the ratatouille before them.

Vastra was unruffled as usual. “It is most well-executed, Jenny, not to worry. Besides, when I crave protein, I have more options than you do.” There was a flash of teeth above the rim of the crystal glass followed by a deep sip.

“Oh, a private dealer?” Intrigued, Jenny wanted to offer to go instead. It was shameful for a master to do a servant's work.

There was that smile again. Jenny wasn't positive she liked it. It wasn't unattractive so much as it was devious. Secretive. “Nothing so unsavory,” Vastra waved her off.

“What then? Why can't I know?”

“Trust me, you aren't interested in this,” Vastra chuckled, amused at Jenny's rising indignation. She took another sip, savored the taste, and took a dainty bite of her meal.

“Well I for one would like a bit of meat now and again too you know! The work you put me through demands a bit more I might say. I would put my wages into it if need be,” Jenny pouted.

Vastra rolled her eyes and held up the deep green bottle from which she had poured and, clutching it by the neck, swirled its contents about. “Care for some, Jenny?”

She shrugged. “All right, thank you kindly,” she replied, unmollified. She reached across the table to take the bottle when she noticed an oddity. “Ma'am this wine is...warm.” It wasn't just room temperature either. It was almost like fresh bath water. Vastra continued to grin across from her, enigmatically, as Jenny stared at her. Gradually, the pieces began to come together.

“It's not wine, Jenny,” Vastra snickered, slightly tipsy on its effects.

“Ma'am, please tell me this isn't what I think it is.” Jenny had gone as stark as a sheet so Vastra took the bottle before she could drop it.

“Jenny, you know those serial child killers and human traffickers we never see serve time?” Vastra began mildly, as if narrating the opening of a clever play.

“No. No.”

Vastra took another drink and continued most jovially. “Well, they're paying off corrupt officials and intimidating the good ones. They go free! Free like the vermin who accosted you the night we met.”

“God no.” Jenny braced her elbows on the table and placed her head in her hands.

The sight of her malaise instantly sobered Vastra from her blood-induced high. She removed the bottle from sight and rose, coming to kneel beside Jenny who seemed a little beside herself for the moment. Gingerly, she tipped the maid's head up till they looked one another in the eyes. Jenny's were full of tears, which remained suspended on the lashes, stubbornly refusing to fall and show her mammalian weakness.

“Jenny, I've been....insensitive. I apologize. Are you afraid?” Her voice was the same sensual purr as it was when she mended her training wounds. “I thought you understood what it is...that I do. You've seen me do it, after all.” The memory of their first meeting again loomed above them.

The silence rested between them, filling up with glistening, threatening tears, and cool, slow-flowing blood. At last, Jenny shook her head. “No Ma'am,” she replied at last, “not afraid at all. But you eat, you eat...”

“Only bad people. Those whose existence insults yours as a living, sentient creature. They don't deserve to live in the same world as you, and decent people. Even indecent people! They're the scourge of the world,” Vastra grasped her hands now and prayed that the scent of the blood wouldn't send Jenny deeper into a shell. “Jenny, I would never hurt you, and I won't consume the flesh of your race in your presence again.”

There were those stubborn non-tears, still clinging, her strength of mind suddenly shredded, but holding on. Seeing it did something to Vastra's insides, simultaneously aching in her chest and clenching along the core of her body like a rope, twisting nearly to the point of snapping. At once, all she needed to do, all that was important to her, was to relieve the agonized tangle of emotion suspended in Jenny's eyes.

Her fingers did a curious thing in that moment as the chasm extended between them. As if attached to someone else, languidly controlled by a more sentimental, warmer lifeform, her thumbs gently brushed Jenny's eyelashes and freed the tears so she wouldn't have to cry them. “It has never been my intention to bring you sorrow or pain. I was careless.”

Her words were more sincere, more alive, and more solemn than Jenny had ever heard from another human. It was the strangest situation because in “regular society” out there beyond Paternoster Row, she had been a nobody, a throwaway. Humans had sought to end her life, and a Silurian had spared it. She had never thought herself worthy of apology before.

“I don't wish to pass judgment on other humans is all, Ma'am,” she decided aloud, and felt gratified when those serious sky-colored eyes met hers and responded with a nod. “Make the bad men go away, Ma'am, but I will never help you with...” she looked toward the wineglass across from her.

“Understood,” Vastra agreed quickly.

Appetite now lost, Jenny stood and turned toward the door.

“Jenny,” Vastra whispered, “since the door in your room hasn't been repaired yet, you may move into the bedroom across from mine. It's all made up for you. I just forgot to tell you earlier.”

Jenny didn't turn back around but uttered an equally quiet, and painfully formal, “Thank you, Ma'am.”

When she was gone, Vastra released her held breath and slumped back in her chair. The evening hadn't been a bust as Jenny might have said, but it had been a mortifying showing. Distracted by her blood treat, she had behaved, well, reptilian. She sat alone for some time that night, remembering the look of Jenny's eyes, filled with tears. Looking down at her thumbs, she extended her forked tongue and dabbed at the very little bit of dampness there. It tasted salty, and terribly sad.

Upstairs later in her new room, Jenny was grateful for privacy again but could not bring herself to feel at home. As she laid on the lavishly large bed and stared up at the red brocade canopy, she realized that she had offered nothing ingenuine to her mistress. She truly was not bothered to learn that Vastra prowled the night, hunting for criminals and boogeymen to devour. Though she would not stand to participate, she had to admire Vastra as a sort of dark hero. No, she was not afraid in the slightest, but it was a long time before she asked another such question at dinner.

 

Less than a week after her unfortunate dinner discovery, Jenny Flint turned seventeen. She had forgotten, actually, because she had been too busy with chores and training to consult the calendar. It had not escaped Vastra's attention however, and so when she awoke that morning, she found a box there waiting for her. There was no note, but no one else was likely to present her with a gift, so Jenny carefully eased the lid open and looked inside. Within were more training clothes in exactly her size. How Vastra had managed to have all of these tailored so well was beyond her, but she tried them on, one after the other. There must have been four or five outfits. One was a leather jerkin and thick leggings with leather reinforced seat and knees, nicely hemmed to fit with boots. Another was a pair of trousers—trousers again!-- but these, made just for her, which still made her feel naked, but she had to admit they were well made. She could pair them with a dove gray vest and white collared shirt. The rest were mix-and-match variations, the last option being all black. She would be running today, she assumed, so she dressed in the leather outfit and a thin linen shirt. As she reached for her boots, she found a new pair, made of very fine leather, not in the Western style at all, but rather, soft soled and silent. They didn't seem very durable. They appeared pre-broken in in fact, but she had no doubt what that Vastra had picked them specifically for her. She put them on.

Vastra was waiting for her when she appeared at the top of the stairs, dressed all in black, ready to out sprint her apprentice without breaking a sweat—not hard for a reptile-- and looking expectant. “I see it suits you quite well,” was all she said, though Jenny swore she saw a little smile before the Madame situated her veil.

“Thank you, Ma'am.”

“Birthdays are very important, especially given how short your lifespan is. Best to meet it with exuberance. Off we go now, Jenny.” The rest of the day passed much the same as the ones before and after it. Despite the peculiar salutations, Jenny had to admit that she was lucky to have gotten anything out of the unsentimental creature at all. More than that, that she was lucky to be alive to see this birthday. Perhaps that was the greatest gift of all, well-made trousers notwithstanding.

 

“Don't be nervous, Jenny, I'm an excellent throw.”

“I'm not, Ma'am.”

Vastra purred her approval in a single note. The sound, Jenny had come to conclude, was not a cat's purr. It was unmistakably reptilian, like a rapid succession of clicks that blended into a rumble. She had heard it more often in the last few weeks as she had thrown herself even more into the draconian training regiment.

As if in testament to her progress, her back, arms, and face had largely ceased to resemble latticework in black and blue, and she had begun not only to dodge and block Vastra's pitiless blows, but occasionally catch them.

The only downside to this was that she needed less attention from Vastra in terms of medicinal application. It was just as well with Jenny though. What had begun as a comforting "skinship" and bonding opportunity, as late, had become a bit of something else. It was the feel of Vastra's hands, almost hypnotic, and that scent of her. Jenny tried not to dwell on it much, but it had ceased to soothe her. Or rather, it did that and more. There was a familiar vibration that began in her stomach and hummed along her bones. She always stuffed it all into the back of her mind like an old threadbare duvet into a closet. Never did she allow herself to even pretend that the feeling existed unless she was tucked in bed alone. She had begun to have the strangest and most irrational fear that her mistress could hear her thoughts.

At least they still had dinner. It had been nothing but pleasant since that one time.

“I believe I instructed you not to be nervous,” came Vastra's voice, with much less approval than before, “but it would seem you've simply gone to another place altogether!”

Startled, Jenny's eyes flew open and reality rushed in. She was sitting seiza as she commonly did in the afternoon, out in the greenhouse. The plants were all for show along the windows. Thick woven tatami mats lined the inner section of the structure, their faint, sweet scent filling a nearly twenty-pace squarish training ground.

There was no sunlight today, as a storm had come the day before and left its clouds to linger, threatening like thugs to unleash the sky's wrath once more. It was also quite cold and Jenny involuntarily shivered. She was wearing only the tight leather leggings and a soft cotton undershirt beneath the tailored jerkin. Her arms were bare and she had never worn so few underclothes in her life before this outfit. She thought she had become immune to the niggling shame that _tsk-tsk_ ed at her unladylike garments, but as her sight landed on Vastra, similarly dressed but sleeved and gloved, arms crossed impatiently, holding a dagger in one hand, Jenny had never felt more naked.

“Are you quite done?” Vastra's voice was aloof and stern at once, but her eyes seemed faintly amused. Had it just been an imagining of a self-conscious mind, or had her teacher been... _looking_ at her?

Jenny did not respond but closed her eyes. She tried to let herself back into peace and relaxed awareness but that scent lingered nearby. It was the sweet hay-like tatami, but also a scent she knew even better. And it was coming from the wrong direction.

The subtle ringing of the blade slicing through the air was her only warning. Jenny wasn't afforded the luxury of disbelief as she twisted at the waist, reached out in her blindness-- and wrapped her hand around the blade.

 

“I can't believe you would _do_ that!” Jenny snarled at Vastra ten minutes later as her fight master clucked like a bemused mother hen and treated her bleeding fingers and palm. She had stopped the bleeding and was now stitching the deepest cuts with a very fine fiber-thin needle and thread like spiderweb. With an application of medicine, the pain was ebbing only very slowly but Jenny was anesthetized by her fury. “I wasn't ready for that!”

Vastra was oblivious as usual and didn't bother to hide her humor. “On the contrary, I thought you performed brilliantly under pressure, Jenny.”

“Brilliant? I nearly had my fingers cut off-- on my right hand, I might add!” Jenny fairly shrieked, recalling that frightening moment when she had opened her eyes and found herself clutching the thrown dagger right before it had buried itself in her skull just behind her left ear.

“Don't be so dramatic now. Fingers are easily fixed. Brains, less so,” Vastra chided as she applied a bandage, noting that an angry Jenny was highly attractive. “Are you alive or not?”

“Alive enough to throttle you!” She looked mad enough to bust a blood vessel.

“Then you have succeeded in the lesson, and we can begin a new one.” Vastra's razor sharp, perfectly straight teeth gleamed in a Cheshire cat grin. “I've noticed that you're much weaker on your left side than your right. Tomorrow, we will remedy that.”

“How?” Jenny sulked, “My hand is damaged.”

The grin was a crescent moon. “Your _right_ hand. Exactly.”

 

They had done hand-to-hand combat drills before, but if a little bit of boxing and even less grappling had seemed like warrior material to Jenny, it was certainly no longer the case. This fact was further emphasized by the lack of a right hand for three weeks.

“I don't want you to injure it any more than it already is,” Vastra had told her after a week. “Rest it fully, let it heal entirely, and strengthen your left.” Vastra even went as far as to tie Jenny's arm to her side like a sling. This also forced Jenny to focus on her footwork. No longer did she sit seiza but would defend blows to her shins, thighs, and occasionally, buttocks.

“No, no, no! You aren't a horse sweeping flies away from your bum,” Vastra would snap, “Quit swatting about and use your legs.”

Jenny learned to trace arcing patterns with her feet, weaving in and out of each stroke, moving and rotating like a dancer, never losing her balance. In some time she could even do it in her sleep or blindfolded. With her left hand, she did push-ups like a royal soldier in training. It was agony at first, but by the time she had healed, she would catch and defend herself as if she had been left-handed all her life.

At this stage, Vastra decided that Jenny, bless her heart, was still too slow and her grip strength, woefully low even for a Silurian child. She knew that more would have to be done if they would see progress.

“Why do I have to chop the firewood and carry water?” Jenny pealed one morning when she had met Vastra downstairs for what she had expected to be a run.

Vastra was unaffected by her resistance as she sat and sipped tea in her favorite chair. “When you have learned to keep your grip on an axe, it will be easier to hold onto a weapon,” she explained gently.

“But you also say I'm slow. How will I get faster if I'm chopping or something instead of running?” she complained.

Vastra glanced up and could not hide her grin. “I never said you weren't running, Jenny.”

Jenny was still cursing her particularly colorful and exceptionally creative expletives as she shouldered the heavy wooden yoke with two buckets on each side. “They need to be full when you return!” Vastra called after her. She knew Jenny would forgive her in some time but thoughts of how else to torment her new student gave way to another consideration in the form of Jenny's rounded backside retreating into the spring fog. She was wearing trousers-- those damnable things she professed to hate so much-- and a long second-hand coat with ragged tails. Her hair had been piled up atop her head and a shapeless old cap pinned in place over it. Vastra had thought she looked boyish at first and androgynous at the very least.

Now she had to reconsider. No, the bulk of the coat had not lessened the shape of her muscular buttocks nor the definition of her legs as she ran. Poor Jenny had been so self-conscious to appear in public in such clothes, had even begged Vastra to allow her to run in a dress, but it simply could not be done safely. Vastra hoped the mist would distort her identity and...other distinguishments enough.

Good Goddess, why was she so preoccupied with a naked pink ape's backside? Even for research it was unseemly. It was beyond that excuse, Vastra had to admit. Her mouth watered at the sight of Jenny's curvaceous shape, or each time she glimpsed a bit more of her soft pale flesh. Her composure had never wavered in training, but to catch a peek here and there of Jenny's cleavage, the nape of her neck, or even the undersides of her arms sent her senses into full hunt mode. It was not dissimilar to hunger, to starvation, actually, sometimes, but Vastra was unsure of how it could be possibly another craving altogether.

Silurians were openly mated with either sex and often both at the same time. There was no taboo in place as with all these ridiculous humans, but still...the idea of being _attracted_ to one faintly turned her stomach. How gelatinous they all seemed, lacking form or boundary, unable to control even the most transient of urges. Their minds were open books of nonsense to one so inclined as Vastra. Plus, they were dolefully fragile and short-lived.

 _Not Jenny_ , her mind spoke up from a familiar depth. _No, not Jenny_ , she conceded. Jenny seemed at once to possess all the form and... _definition_ Vastra would ever admire in one of her own race, with a mysterious mental proficiency at least as a defense and not inconsequential intellect and reckoning ability. Alas, she was too emotional for Vastra's interests to fully extend to her.

 _Perhaps not_ , that voice from the deep reminded her. True. Jenny was an accomplished complainer, but she had plucked the knife from the air with prodigious skill. If emotions were a liability, Vastra had yet to see them hinder Jenny. What made her so special?

 _Maybe she isn't_ , that voice reminded her. _Maybe she's special because of your inclinations toward her._

 _Nonsense_ , Vastra sniffed dismissively. She was simply lonely and the coincidence of Jenny's aptitudes had attracted her, nothing more. She wouldn't explore it further. It would be unfair to use Jenny for such a paltry need when what the girl clearly needed was protection and gainful employment. Surely in some time she would move on and find some dashingly horrendous male ape with whom to mate. Now _that_ was stomach-churning.

A list of reasons not to be fabricated itself and unfurled ever downward in her mind until it sank even into the deep recesses of her consciousness. _Instead_ , Vastra told herself, _let's explore Jenny's other potentials_.

 

Jenny didn't finish her chores that morning. For the first mile of her run, she'd thought only of cursing her mistress to whatever Silurian Hell she could imagine. For the second mile, she realized how strong she had become and felt empowered by it. Hitting her stride was easy here. It was so easy that she became distracted upon realizing she was wearing very outlandish clothing (for a woman) and wondered if lookers-on had noticed that she was a male impostor. By mile four, she didn't care. She did have a greater appreciation for how meticulously Vastra had wrapped her hands, and the care her mistress had taken in ordering her training outfits. They never chafed nor tore or bunched up like the street clothes she now wore. There was a little part of her that asked the good Lord not to cast the lizard woman into the Pit. But only a little part; she still had miles to go.

When finally she did return to Thirteen Paternoster Row, she entered via the servants' entrance and promptly collapsed under her yoke across the back steps. If she had expected to lose consciousness in privacy, it was not her destiny, for her damnation descended in pleated Oriental hakama pants and green scales.

“Get up and cleaned, Lazy Apprentice,” came a voice that was as familiar as it was foreign to Jenny's rapidly retreating mental facilities. Maybe it was the voice of the Archangel...or Lucifer. Jenny didn't really care. Whatever it was dumped a bucket of water over her head. She prayed that it hadn't been one of the buckets she had been so careful not to spill. When the second bucket followed shortly behind, her last waking thought was of how cross Madame Vastra would be when she saw them empty. She hoped she wouldn't have to do the run again.

 

She awoke in a dark place. Immediately it occurred to her to be alarmed, and she would have been, had she not scented warm iron and dry salt. “Ma'am?” she called out.

“Do not be frightened.”

“Why can't I see?” She reached a hand in front of her face. She couldn't even feel it, much less see it. That was the most worrisome thing to her.

“Jenny, I'm right here. Don't be scared. Do you smell that?”

Well, yes. It was Madame Vastra's scent that had distracted her but there was a much less noticeable one that reminded her of the salve they used, or a scent that had lingered in her room down in the servants' quarters many months ago. She couldn't identify it.

“It's a special candle. Suffice it to say, you are having an out-of-body experience, so to speak. It is temporary and safe. I want to test something.” Her mistress's voice seemed to be all around her. She floated in a sea of it. “Be calm. Try to find the light,” Vastra's voice commanded.

“But there isn't any.”

“Don't worry about that. Just be still and look.”

Jenny obeyed if only because she was assured that her employer was truly present somewhere in the dark. She envisioned Vastra in her mind and steadily whispered to herself, “Show me.”

At first, there was nothing but she didn't trust her eyes. She waited, and looked for Vastra. In the corner of her eye was a speck. She rubbed at it for it annoyed her. It was hot and she turned her head as if to blink and toss it out. To her surprise, it moved with her. It wouldn't stop tormenting her despite her efforts to ignore it and think of Vastra. It was at this very moment that she realized, for the first time, that she was able to feel her body.

Curiously, she rubbed again at the offending speck, which cooperated and moved as she shifted her head. It was hot as a tiny ember from a gutted campfire, and so irritating, but Jenny moved it carefully until it centered over her eye. Then, with great deliberation, followed by a monumental effort, adjusted her vision, and stared at it. Then _through_ it.

It was not a speck at all, she realized then, but the light of a candle in another room, as if she now peered through the tiniest keyhole ever. Inexplicably she poked her finger into and held her breath as she managed to stretch it, larger and larger now until she could step into it and through to the room beyond.

Vastra, sitting seiza, serene, and smiling faintly, gestured at the brazier beside her, in which was set a short, fat, glowing, silvery candle. “You did it.”

Jenny blinked and then again. She also sat seiza, across from Vastra, wearing a simple cotton training uniform called a gi. “I don't understand.”

Vastra spoke slowly so as not to frighten her. “I had suspicions of you, so I devised a small test. Now that I know, I think your training will truly bear fruit.”

“Know what, Ma'am?”

“Jenny, Silurians are telepathic. My genetic line is not extremely so, but enough to be useful.” She tapped the center of her forehead, a place that Jenny had heard in certain meditation exercises as the “third eye” chakra. She began to digest this information and clarity came faster than she thought it would.

“Is that how you knew what I dreamed about that time? Can you...read my mind?” Oh the horrifically mortifying things she must have seen! Jenny turned red like a beet.

“No,” Vastra assured her, “because unlike most humans, you have an innate barrier erected. I only saw because you called out to me that night and let me in. You see, Jenny, you have a gift as well.”

“What does that mean?” Jenny looked around, noticed that the room had not windows or doors, and began to feel nervous, closed in.

“Calm down,” Vastra purred, “Your race is occasionally gifted with various talents from back before our...branches diverged. You have only the barest sliver of telepathic talent. Honestly, it's almost nothing.”

Somehow that made Jenny feel worse instead of better but she didn't interrupt.

“I have been wondering how best to train you. I worried that we would come upon your limit so early that you would hardly improve at all. Now I know how to give you an edge.” Vastra's eyes were lights unto themselves. “Jenny, I want to exploit his sliver. This drop of talent. I will teach you to anticipate attacks and react even half an instant faster. That alone would make the difference in snatching a knife by its handle rather than by its blade.”

“And you won't be able to read my thoughts?” Jenny asked, immediately suspicious.

Vastra shook her head. “No. You have my word. Unless you wish for me to.”

Jenny hesitated even still. “And if I do wish it?”  
Vastra's insides gave a little leap at this but hoped it had gone unnoticed. She consented to a small, kind smile. “In that case, you need only call out to me, or I to you, if I wish to speak to you.”

Jenny seemed satisfied. “All right,” she said finally.

“Excellent.” Vastra blew out the candle.

 

Jenny awoke a second time, but staring up at the ceiling of the greenhouse. Sitting up so quickly that she gave herself a head rush, she looked this way and that for Vastra but found that she was alone. Then, she looked down at herself and paled. She had been laid on a stripped sleeping pallet in her underthings for Pete's sake! True, someone—probably Vastra-- had left her also wrapped in a thick towel, but of her outer clothes there was no sign. All she had on were a faintly damp camisole, and equally so bloomers which she had worn beneath those ridiculously dilapidated trousers.

There was no sign of any other clothing, so Jenny finally gritted her teeth, gathered herself as best as she could, and made tracks toward the main house.

 

Vastra was just handing over her latest case file to Inspector Kent of Scotland Yard when she heard the backdoor slam. A heartbeat later, Jenny, wrapped in a towel and wearing only thin white undergarments stormed in looking about as mad as a rogue Planet Eater.

Unfortunately for everyone, the poor middle-aged inspector standing there in the foyer also got a glimpse before Vastra could fully react. He gaped like a fish and as Jenny realized what was happening, she did too.

Thinking quickly, Vastra reached out and mildly altered his perception for Jenny's modesty.

“Uh, err...” The inspector was stammering, looking now at the ceiling. “Madame Vastra, it appears your servant, uh--”

“Has had a dreadful spill down the basement stairs, Detective, yes, you should probably go now,” Vastra agreed, further influencing his mind as she turned him toward the door.

“Scotland Yard and all of Britain is in your debt,” he announced, and took her hand to place a gentle kiss upon the knuckles.

“Pity the Crown if I ever decide to collect,” Vastra quipped, “Till next time, good Sir.” She curtsied in a ladylike fashion, as thought it were the most normal thing in the world. Once she had closed the door, she turned to Jenny. “Now, I regret to have had to leave you there like that--” she began, but Jenny cut her off much faster.

“ _'Like that_ ,'?” She shrieked, approaching her so quickly, she saw the lizard woman's eyes widen in surprise. “And you had _company_ over and didn't see fit to give me so much as a _tip_?”

“Well, true, we could have used a spot of tea,” mused Vastra thoughtfully.

Jenny went positively incandescent at this, which thickened her accent in a most visceral and alluring way. “You terrible knave of a female, how dare you make light of my virtue? A man in the house and me, undressed like a harlot in the back?” She let loose a few choice insults involving lizards and copulation which made Vastra blush a deep viridian, but too amused to be offended.

“It seems I was quite thoughtless. I apologize. The visit was quite unexpected and you were still asleep--”

“Damn right you're sorry you cold-blooded snake spawn--” Jenny stopped short as she realized Vastra's patiently interested expression. “Ma'am! You aren't wearing your veil. And that inspector didn't even care. What--”

“I am wearing it,” Vastra mildly corrected her.

“What? No you aren't.” Jenny pointed to it.

“Jenny, my veil is both literal and mental.” Vastra tapped her bonnet, attached to which was a veil. “This anchors a psychic suggestion, see? When people see it they're more apt to believe my mental lie. Sometimes in public I actually do wear it down, but in moments such as this, even when I am not veiled, they think I am.”

Jenny tried to process this. “Then how can I see your face?”

Vastra locked the door and approached her. “Because we are open to one another. I have let you through the deception and you have allowed yourself to see. Oh and by the way, I projected an image of you, quite disheveled, but fully clothed to the inspector. Am I still such a cold-blooded snake spawn?” Her tongue caught between her teeth, teasing, and forked.

Jenny rolled her eyes. “Maybe just cold-blooded Ma'am.” As she turned to head up to her room, it occurred to her that this psychic opening might have happened before, unintended, before they had begun all of this. She turned and looked back, found Vastra looking over at her, unmoved. Her expression was largely unreadable, but Jenny wondered if the wistful feeling in her chest belonged only to her. They shared a long look, and then Vastra bowed her head and slipped from the room.

 

The Silurian saw a truly deadly side of her maid-turned-protege in the weeks following that. There was a saying among her people that translated as, “When the Third Eye is open, one is awake, others sleep,” referring to a Silurian's psychic channels opening and how that would spell death for her enemies.

Despite both she and Jenny lacking the literal third eye that her more rural and ancient cousins were rumored to possess, she could not imagine a more accurate description of Jenny now. She truly seemed awake and alert in a way that humans rarely were. The difference was meager at first, but it was enough to excite the little human who threw herself into this new challenge as she had every other.

There were callouses on her hands from chopping wood, and she would never run as long in the park as Vastra, but instead of passing out, she reached inside herself and seemed to pull forth extra speed, another mile, a few more blocks of wood, or one more punch from a wellspring within her soul.

She had graceful feet and faster hands. Vastra found her exploiting chinks in her defenses both in and out of sparring. Not once but twice, she had been slammed in the obliques by an off-handed fist while distracted by Jenny's graceful feinting maneuvers or that one lock of hair that fell out of place, curving around her ear.

More than once, it had been Jenny rubbing salve onto the scuffed and battered scales on the side of Vastra's face or along her arms, joking that while she had yet to help her cinch a corset, she had managed to get within her guard.

Vastra had obviously gone easy on her, but her pride was not so wounded that she verbalized this to her. She now did what Jenny had when the roles had been reversed. She smelled Jenny, listened to her, and felt a part of her open in a helpless, dizzying, inescapable sort of way.

She was huge on baths for her resident ape. There was a lower level powder room that had been retrofitted (or future fitted, perhaps) with a showering apparatus that used recycled water as on a Silurian long-distance space galley. She mandated Jenny to use it once a day at least to keep her mammalian sweat stench to a minimum. Jenny had, at first, balked, afraid to catch a cold and perish, but when she had stepped into the adjoining sonic dryer and come out warm and clean, she had protested no more.

Of course, Vastra could still smell her. It was unavoidable without skinning the girl. In such small doses though, she grew to tolerate and then even favor the hot, sweet, salty tang of Jenny, mixed faintly with the after effects of lavender soap. She smelled appetizing, but with all her exposure to Vastra's medicines, candles, and such, she was practically Silurian now. Warm blooded and all.

The notion would have sickened her before, but now Vastra wondered if there was anything so sensual as Jenny Flint right after training, sharing a rapid-healing medicinal agent, followed by dinner in candle light.

Another veil was lifted during one such night, scarcely less than two weeks before Jenny's eighteenth's birthday. They were supping on a decadent rabbit stew, the result of a successful hunting trip in the countryside, from which they had only returned late last night.

Jenny had only been handling training weapons for about four months, but with such alacrity that every piece of metal, wood, or even leather seemed like an extension of her body. She had been eyeing Vastra's matched set of dragon-pommeled, katana-like Odachi for some time, but her teacher had been loathe to place killing instruments in her hands until she understood the finer points of taking life.

Hunting had been the first time for Jenny, in her favorite boots, leggings, and a tunic of form fitting canvas, as well as keen-edged hunting knives, crossed and strapped at the small of her back. She had hunted with Vastra like a pair of lionesses. Vastra, faster, had herded the prey while Jenny, quick as an eagle, had snatched them up. They had killed together, swiftly, without allowing any creature to suffer.

The very first time, Jenny had seemed ill, and Vastra wondered if she had pushed her too hard, too fast. She made the first kill to spare Jenny, but her apprentice had unflinchingly made the second, and then the third. Taking life would never be to Jenny what it was for Vastra-- a release, a consummation of nourishment and instinctual energy-- but if called to do it, she no longer could doubt her ability.

It was as they shared a meal of their mutual kills that Vastra became suddenly aware of a single revolving thought that Jenny, tired and relaxed, was idly replaying in the very front of her mind. It was a memory, of sorts, from her personal point of view. It showed her, Vastra, having made the first kill. Some blood had splashed in a fine line from her left cheek scales almost to her jaw. Vastra remembered this clearly herself. She had looked up and Jenny had wiped it away with the side of her gloved hand.

The vision playing now deviated just before, however. In Jenny's mind's eye, the drop of blood had been clear as a jewel. A teardrop, Vastra deduced, for it was salty when Jenny leaned over and licked it away with the tip of her tongue.

Vastra stood abruptly. “Too young,” she murmured, and left the table in a rush, startling Jenny and leaving her to wonder why she was now to finish dinner alone.

She kept wondering too, for six days more, when Vastra vanished from the house “on business” and she had to train alone, noting the absence of many of Vastra's weapons including her much admired Oriental swords.

She cleaned the house top to bottom and dined alone each night. There was enough in the larder that she didn't leave, afraid to miss her mistress's return. She sought Vastra in her mind and was assured that the Silurian lived, but no other information was forthcoming. There was a shut door between them.

The papers gave her no help really. A few missing dogs among the aristocracy gave her pause, since a few had belonged to the Queen, but it was probably unrelated to the next story about a dead prostitute and several others missing, and both stories were unrelated to Vastra's whereabouts. The only moment when Jenny realized that she was probably all right was when an infamous and evasive crime lord's decapitated head had been found adrift in the Thames, the rest of his body having been gobbled by scavengers or lost. Vastra was working somewhere. That would explain, to some degree at least, her elusiveness.

Finally, days later, in the evening, the front door opened and she ran down stairs. It was there in the foyer that Vastra greeted her, and presented her with early birthday gifts. There were several boxes and Jenny tore into them with childlike delight. Kid gloves lined with rabbit fur for the winter made her sigh with happiness. A set of cruelly elegant, bone-handled skinning knives, all razor-sharp, made her promise to take good care of them and love them. Finally, there was a long square-edged box wrapped in paper, which she opened as well and gasped.

“Do you like it, Jenny?” Vastra's voice was shy, her azure eyes, apologetic, but also hopeful.

Jenny's expression needed no interpretation or words of gratitude as she reached in and pulled out the elegant black-handled katana. It was lighter than an Odachi, and a bit smaller, but would rest on her hip and be simple to draw. A pace away, Vastra stood, still as ever with her own thoughts and emotions roiling beneath the placid surface of her face. She was genuinely surprised and exceptionally thrilled when Jenny leaped into her embrace with a whoop of utter delight.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since I am having to repost this entire thing, it would be important to let you know that this is backed up from a slightly older file and therefore might require some more editing. I will continue to do so. I am so sorry for deleting the original posting :'(


	3. Sister

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jenny's training is largely complete and she convinces Vastra to allow her to begin operating alongside her. Trust and friendship are present along with the undercurrent of attraction that both are trying to either hide or process, alternately. 
> 
> Alternate title: Comrade

Part III

 

Vastra was looking...different. Jenny had noticed just after her eighteenth birthday, two weeks ago, and was attempting to muster the courage to bring it up, but things kept getting in the way. Strange things. It was terribly ironic to have such a thought given that she was living with a prehistoric lizard woman, but she had no other way to describe it.

First, there had been her actual birthday. Given the interesting festivities (or lack thereof) last time, she hadn't expected much, if anything at all, but she had been surprised again. Vastra had woken her up for a change, and served her a delicious black pudding with honeyed Oriental tea. In fact, she had been so excited and proud of it-- having made it herself, evidently-- that Jenny gobbled it down without question, never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, or meal, as it were.

She hadn't had a moment to reflect either, because Vastra had commanded her to dress (not in trousers, thank God) and meet a carriage with her. It was a grand coach pulled by a team of four roan mares bearing the crest of Her Majesty and the smaller insignia of Scotland Yard. When she saw them pull up at their door and the footman nimbly leap down to open the door for them, she exclaimed to her mistress, “This cannot be for us!”

“It is, dear maid,” Vastra sighed through her nose, “one can expect to travel in style when so highly regarded by the Crown. Someday, I imagine I'll simply have to purchase my own and employ a driver. Alas that day has not come.” She daintily adjusted her veil—a physical one today, and accepted a hand up into the cabin before reaching back to help Jenny into the seat beside her.

“Where are we going?” she asked her employer, who drew the privacy curtains over the windows.

“To commune with our other cousins,” she replied enigmatically. Apparently it was to be a surprise. Jenny tried to beg it out of her, or guess based on their direction, but she was still taken off guard when they pulled up to a high-fenced walled garden on the far end of the city. Curiously she asked Vastra where they were.

It turned out to be the Royal Menagerie, an exhibit she had never imagined seeing in real life. Her mistress led her to the gate where they were met and let in with murmurs of “welcome ma'am” and a round of shallow bowing that made her gape.

She tried not to act like a gawking simpleton as Vastra casually pointed out all sorts of exotic animals from the New World, Africa, and even Indochina. There was a glorious pair of Sumatran tigers, which she was informed were less orange than their larger Siberian cousins. However, when they rounded a short corner and looked down into a pit with a domed cage over the top, there was one of those much larger Siberians in the flesh, and he was not orange nor any related color at all. His stripes were black, and that much was familiar, but the rest of his fur was stark white, like snow. His eyes, rather than tawny amber and ringed with black, were blue and icy like Vastra's.

“Is he an albino?” Jenny wondered.

Vastra shook her head, “No, a genetic variation. A snow predator. Highly specialized one might say,” she tipped her veil up enough to smile, which made Jenny feel weak-kneed. Perhaps it was the heat. The day had grown humid and warm. She followed her teacher and looked at several different varieties of bear, including a pure white arctic species which looked magnificent but wholly out of place and too hot for their climate. She felt sorry for it.

There were cages and cages of exotic birds, some with beaks long as Jenny's arm, or in as many colors as a rainbow. Some had huge talons longer than her fingers, or cold white feathers dotted with spots. Others were small and iridescent, singing happily. A few varieties, like a pair of black swans, swam gracefully and nonchalantly in the water.

At last, there was a pit as three times as deep as a man was tall. It was divided into two with fencing in the middle, and a tall multi-armed tree extending from one side to the other in the middle. On one side were spider monkeys, jovially swinging about, their tails like extra arms, never missing a branch or landing. They were so cute and as one climbed up to the very top and looked at her, she realized there was a keen intelligence here as well.

On the other side of the pit, in what looked to be a massive woven hammock, reclined a pair of great apes, both larger than a man and covered with thick dark hair, and without tails of any sort. “Gorillas?” Jenny asked, “I've only seen them in the computer.”

“Shh,” Vastra cautioned her so others nearby wouldn't overhear the anachronism, “Yes, an example of your simian cousins. You might also enjoy chimpanzees which are smaller but of even more intelligence. Or this other species they call bonobos. Stupid name for such smart apes. They're matriarchal, you know, and sexually fluid. They aren't as violent and prone to turf wars. One might think they're even higher on the evolutionary chain than humans.”

Jenny tried not to be offended but her face must have betrayed her because Vastra furrowed her brow. “That was meant as an observation, not a slight. It was tactless,” she admitted haltingly. Jenny nodded both in acknowledgment and acceptance of the closest thing to an apology she would ever likely receive from the infuriating lizard.

“Would you like to see _my_ closest cousins?” Vastra offered.

“I wouldn't miss it,” Jenny replied, offense forgotten as she hooked her hand in Vastra's elbow. It was a bold move, but her mistress only pulled her along the path as if they belonged together.

 

“What...are those?” Jenny whispered, her dark eyes open wide to take in the sight of the beast in the enclosure before them. It was a reptile of similar color, pattern, and texture to Vastra, with a black forked tongue and wicked long claws. It was larger than a grown man. Its black eyes glinted with a predatory confidence and a slightly different, perhaps more ancient, intelligence than the tiger.

“They call it a dragon, found in Indonesia,” Vastra answered, “if only they knew.”

The handlers now extended a fresh sheep's haunch on a long rod through the bars, and it moved with startling agility to feed, its razor teeth like rows of upward-facing knife blades, sitting in a foul-smelling drooling maw. It ripped flesh from bone and rent even the femur easily with hellish delight.

“Magnificent creature,” Vastra marveled, and Jenny could not disagree, though she was equally disturbed.

“When you...feed...” she left the question hanging, unable to ask.

“We are much more civilized,” Vastra clarified, catching on, “more efficient, thorough, and much faster.”

“Oh.” Somehow this wasn't what Jenny had wanted to know but she left it at that.

“Let us sup early in town this night. I have a connection who had prepared a special meal for your birthday,” Vastra announced abruptly, and grandly. Jenny did not feel especially like eating now, but she wasn't in the mood to end her birthday yet either. Her teacher and employer was being so uncommonly generous. After all the training they had done with her new weapons, not to mention her new adulthood (regardless of her future in perpetual spinsterhood), she felt like celebrating, so she agreed readily.

Back into the carriage they went and were whisked away to the other side of the Thames near the Bear Garden, where a restaurant bearing a name Jenny could not pronounce had been built. “It is translated 'the Golden Leopard' in English,” Vastra explained in a whisper, “It is in Sanskrit. If the crown jewel of Britannia is India, then the heart of such a jewel is its food.” A dark skinned man with elegant Asiatic features in a fine suit led them into a private dining room blocked with gold curtains and draped everywhere with material from the Silk Road itself, and left them alone at normal-looking table that bore intricate carvings in the hard ruddy wood. The owner and chef, a bearded Hindu called Yamaraja, bowed severely to Vastra and after a few words in a language that Jenny did not know, presented them with a curious dinner.

“Meat pie?” Jenny exclaimed, “I thought this was an Indian place.”

Vastra had removed her veil (the physical one at least) so that Jenny could see her mischievous face. “Wait till you cut it open, Apprentice.”

Opening was one thing but tasting was the key. An unfamiliar flavor palette exploded on her tongue. It was smooth, sweet, spicy, and rich. She sipped at a cup of chai that had been offered to her, and looked to Vastra, eyes full of curiosity.

“It is a play on meat pie, which I thought you would like, but with an Indian styling. A most curious fusion, don't you agree? It is a mix of ancient spices brought from the East first by Marco Polo, along with coconut milk and garlic. I believe it is like what they call ratham poriyal. Very high quality.” She had almost finished hers.

Jenny was a bit overwhelmed by this culinary experience but admitted that it was quite good. Moreover, it was somehow familiar. “Um, what kind of meat did you say this was, Ma'am?”

“Oh silly me. It is a very pure stir fried lamb's blood. You'll find that it is exceptional for your constitution.” Vastra handed over a round of the flat Indian bread they called Naan, and ate casually.

Now Jenny had a sinking feeling and felt compelled to ask another question. “Ma'am, what was that which you fed to me this morning?”

“Why Jenny, I would have thought you knew. It was a black pudding, of an Irish style, if I remember correctly. I learned to make it some time ago and was quite amazed I still remembered.” Vastra sipped her chai signaled a server who brought her some saffron-infused rice and more of the dark blood stir fry.

“Black pudding?” Jenny gulped hard.

“Why yes. Oh and again? Purest lamb's blood. Not even the Queen has a supply as fresh as you had,” Vastra was practically preening until she noticed that Jenny was still and paling.

“Ma'am, if I may ask, why do I sense a particularly, er, sanguine theme to my meals this day?” she asked evenly.

“Why, do you not enjoy the fare I've selected?” Vastra double blinked, confused.

“Delicious, all of it,” Jenny replied quickly to assure her, “but...why?”

There wasn't an easy answer but Vastra did her best. “When Silurians of noble heritage come of age, they are cleansed with blood meals and other material like liver, intestines or organs sometimes, or heart meat by their admirers. It is said to help them breed and look favorably on their generous suitors. It is an ancient courtship ritual. It is also to help them become strong warriors, which is what you have devoted yourself to so admirably this past year.”

“Organs?” Jenny had not moved beyond that yet.

“Offal,” Vastra tried to clarify.

“Awful,” Jenny agreed, or tried to.

Vastra paused again, reading her, before primly setting down her spoon. “You dislike it,” she said flatly.

“It's not bad at all, Ma'am. Just a bit...Exotic.” Jenny smiled meekly.

Vastra's brow furrowed and she snapped a phrase to the server, who left quickly and returned with an opaque cup with what seemed like wine. Vastra offered her non of it, and nursed it while Jenny hurried to finish her meal. It was then that she had first thought Vastra seemed slightly different, but couldn't be certain, as the candle light was distorting the colors as they played upon her green skin.

 

That had been two days before she had seen Vastra again at dinner with her head totally uncovered, drinking what Jenny had deduced to be more blood. Yes, this time she had been sure. Vastra's skull ridges were definitely red at the very tips.

Now that some weeks had passed and training had continued with greater difficulty (and sadism on Vastra's part, she swore), Jenny had observed the effect becoming inexplicably more pronounced. The color change to most of Vastra's body that she had observed had been subtle, with the green lightening and the gold undertones becoming more pronounced and scintillating in direct light. The real drama began at her cheeks which now blushed slightly red and swept up in a blood-washed dusting up toward her scalp and ridges,now a ruby-shaded tapestry of scales, the very tips of which were as opaque and lustrous as gems.

She hadn't had time to ask her mistress about it though, with all the studying, hot-coal-walking, meditating, fencing, dagger throwing, pistol shooting, boxing, grappling, and normal chores she still found herself squeezing into each day. Vastra was a taskmaster, more aggressive and demanding with each sunrise, and weirdly more physical with her than ever. They wrestled more often, and she found herself pressed, wrapped, or trussed up someway or another in Vastra's limbs. The slap of Vastra's hand on her wrist, reminding her to lower or raise her sword hand was more present now than the tip of the switch. Her mistress's hands on her hips, a firm grip that made her insides feel as liquid as syrup, as she had corrected her stance earlier in the day, had drawn a small yelp.

During dinner later, it hadn't even occurred to her to ask. She was far too tired and emotionally wound-up, preoccupied now at the dishes she would later be washing. Out of the blue, Vastra's voice issued from across the table. “Do you want to get married?”

So many things occurred to her at once that she almost dropped the carefully erected mental wall of which she had become so conscious. The best she could do was stutter, “Beg your pardon, Ma'am?”

Vastra's skin was luminous like a dragon but her eyes were gray and cloudy. “Is it your dream to be married? Have children? You're of age now and I wondered if, well, as your employer and guardian, I should be making inquiries for suitors.”

“Er, men, Ma'am?” Jenny had never felt so stupid.

“Yes. Those. Male apes who might beat their chests or offer you baubles or whatever it is that would allow them to mount you exclusively for the duration of your ephemeral lives.” Vastra studiously refused to meet her eyes.

Jenny's cheeks reddened in mortification and several other emotions that made her feel explosive. “I am happy as I am, Ma'am. If you are displeased by my progress in your service, please let me know how I offend. Or if you have tired of me and wish for me to leave, I shall do so on the morrow,” she ground out through clenched teeth, staring hard into her plate. She had pushed the peas around and not consumed even one.

“Oh Jenny don't be silly,” Vastra answered with half an eye roll as if looking to Heaven but grown bored, “That isn't it at all. I just don't want you to feel chained to me.” What she did not say was how frustrated she was that despite all the gestures and displays she had spread before the human girl, Jenny seemed positively unmoved toward her except perhaps in awkward friendship. She rubbed her sensitive, reddened scalp ridges grouchily. She wasn't used to being rebuffed-- or worse, in this case, _unnoticed_.

Had she simply imagined that peek into Jenny's mind? Originally it had upset her to have felt so attracted to someone who was considered a child by her society. It had agonized her such that she had run for a cowardly long time in an animalistic fuge of urges which had culminated in her corporeal rending of a notorious career criminal, followed by the general consumption of his corpse. Not even that had taken the edge off her much different but similarly intense feelings toward Jenny. She had had no choice in the end but to turn back toward Paternoster Row, collect the birthday gifts she had ordered in advance for her coming of age, and present them to her. They had been both reward and token, evidence of a promise to do things right with her or not at all. And with that had come a subtle shift in her hormonal chemistry, and this annoying, unavoidable, physical display of intention, which Jenny seemed not to notice at all.

She had been drawn to many comely faces in that week and in days and years before Jenny, but none affected her so absolutely. She wanted Jenny to know this, but as yet she seemed as disinclined and oblivious as any ape having been courted by a serpent. The metaphor seemed eerily apt; she seemed frightened, as Vastra's gestures had generally had the opposite of their intended effect.

In desperation, Vastra had just faintly threatened Jenny with matrimony to a male ape just to see if perhaps that was the issue between them, having no way of knowing that this was the most frightening thing of all to the human maid, as made evident by her sudden emotional lockdown. _Wonderful_. “Jenny, what is it?”

“Is it so hard?” Jenny blurted.

“Pardon me?”

“Is it so hard,” Jenny choked on a sob and began again, “to see me as worthy? Am I so far down the evolutionary ladder from you that I am no more than a pet? An experiment to see if you can teach a monkey to dance and pantomime civility? Is it entertaining to play with my emotions? I know I'm just a maid but I thought I was more--”

“You are my student,” Vastra began, for the student-teacher relationship was sacred to Silurians, and not to be taken lightly.

“Could we not be friends?” Jenny exhaled, as if with fire. “Am I not trustworthy enough? Kind enough, or bold enough, to warrant that?”  
“Jenny of course, I--” Vastra became distracted by a large gaping hole in Jenny's mental wall. It was only an instant but she saw...something. Something that gave her a modicum of hope. She regrettably had missed a more tangible window of conversation, however, for her failure to speak had been grossly misinterpreted and Jenny ran from the room in furious tears.

 

That night, Jenny had the dream again. The bad dream. Vastra had been in a fitful sleep of her own, plagued by a tug-of-war of longing and frustration. Her maid's mental cry was like a lance right through her heart which shattered her back to reality. The naked fear and undisguised desperation for her summoned her to Jenny's bedroom where she wrenched the young woman into waking. Her hand had already clutched her black-handleded katana from her bedside and her heart pounded like hammer blows against Vastra. They held onto each other for several moments, with Vastra whispering gentle words of calming nonsense to relax Jenny's hold on the weapon until it could be eased out of her grip.

The dream had been worse somehow. More complex. Vastra could not ascertain the exact details but she let it go in favor of comforting Jenny now. The cool moonlight was shining dreamily through the window and she could see that Jenny wasn't crying this time, but her hands now fisted in Vastra's long nightgown sleeves, even as they laid together and the Silurian pulled up the covers.

Jenny didn't fall asleep like a child after a nightmare though. She muttered something that even Vastra, with her strong hearing, could not make out, and asked for a repeat.

“I don't like men, Ma'am.”

“I'm sorry I brought it up.”

“No. I really, don't _like_ men, Ma'am. Any of them. Not like that.” A shattered sob trembled her. “Please don't marry me off.”

“Jenny, you can stay here as long as you wish,” Vastra assured her, “Why are you so afraid I'll put you out?”

“My own family did, that's why,” Came a whisper in the dark. A terrible understanding began to take shape in Vastra's mind. “My own family, when they found out about me...they put me out!” Now there were some tears, and Vastra tried to wipe them. “I would have died that night if you hadn't come, and _no one_ would have cared!”

 _Ah there's the rub_ , Vastra thought to herself, clarity dawning in full at last. “You...refused to be mated?” she tried to be tactful. Jenny nodded once in her arms but didn't speak, as if waiting for her to elaborate on this and see the whole picture, steeling herself for an emotional blow that she was not ready to trust would not fall. “Because... you prefer...female company?” A slight hesitation here and then a nod and Vastra understood. “You are safe with me,” she promised, and only then could Jenny be soothed enough to sleep. This time, Vastra did not leave. Her thoughts consisted only of supporting her friend now, and did not even bother to process the flame of hope that burned in a deep crevasse of her mind.

 

The next day began distinctly differently for Jenny Flint who awoke from a deep slumber, not in her room down in the servants' apartments but in her upstairs bedroom down the hall from Madame Vastra's. A thick comforter covered her and a canopy like fire stretched above her head. It was cool today and only faint rays of sunlight shone through the gap in the heavy curtains.

 _I'm late to rise_ , she thought, but no sense of urgency accompanied this realization. Then she fully came awake, and reality, a strange one, materialized. Madame Vastra laid beside her, also asleep, clad in a high-necked, long sleeved nightgown. One arm was thrown casually above her head, and the other...was wrapped around Jenny, whose heart fluttered mightily as she let her eyes wander over the tensionless, soft, utterly serene expression on her mistress's face.

She had never noticed before, but in between the scales on Vastra's scalp, where she took on a decidedly marine appearance, there seemed to be...hair. Just a few, and so fine they were nearly invisible except from the right angle. Intrigued, Jenny momentarily forgot her curious situation and reached up to feel the little hairs. Or fur. Reptiles didn't have either, right? It was impossibly soft, like an eyelash or a single piece of goose down.

“It's not fur if that's what you're thinking,” Vastra's voice startled her. She looked down and the lizard woman had one eye open, which regarded her and then promptly shut again.

“What's the difference?” Jenny asked, genuinely curious.

“Well in general, not much, as hair and fur are both keratin used as an insulating device,” Vastra began without opening her eyes, “the main differences are in the placement and follicle density of course.”

“Of course,” Jenny echoed, unsure.

“But the answer to what I suspect is your real inquiry makes all of that irrelevant.”

“Irrelevant?”

Vastra's eyes flew open. “Why Jenny, have you been replaced by some sort of parrot this morning, or has the cool weather made you take leave of your senses?”

Jenny frowned in response this time.

“As I was saying,” Vastra continued, more patiently this time, “the reason is that these that you see here are more akin to feathers as it were.” Her eyes closed again.

“Feathers? Well, what's the difference there?” Jenny's curiosity was piqued anew.

Vastra opened her eyes again and thought about it, looking up to a place beyond where Jenny sat. “Also keratin. Like your fingernails and, oh, my hard scales here, and hair, and feathers. Remarkable is it not? How the body uses essentially dead cells to create defenses? Tools even. Evolution at its best.”

Jenny had read a little bit of this on the computer and hadn't believed it at first despite having cohabited with literally a missing link. She listened now, immediately liking the way Vastra could go on and on, so wise and teacherly. “Feathers are special. More complex, you see, as the components hook together to form a single structure, the center of which is filled with blood. Flight feathers are even more ingenious--” Now they were off track as even Jenny knew that Silurians could not fly.

“Do yours have blood in them? Or are they like mine?”

Vastra tipped her head to one side. “Only in the very base, but they also fall out seasonally.”

“Why?”

“Because they are not quite the same. Convergent or divergent evolution tends to do that. Besides, lately my hormone levels have fluctuated and it happens. It isn't alarming.” She shrugged, and was suddenly aware of the little ape's eyes burning out a question as they examined her reddened crown and cheeks.

“Evolutionary...nostalgia?” Jenny suggested thoughtfully with an index finger hovering over that beauty mark near her mouth.

Vastra's eyes dilated as she followed the motion. Jenny caught it but made no mention. “I like that,” Vastra decided, “perhaps anachronistic, but workable.” She impulsively poked Jenny on the nose. “Well enough sleeping in. Today is a work day after all.”

“Every day is a work day!” Jenny groaned, hiding her face in a pillow.

Vastra thrust open the curtains there with a great spread of her arms. “Quite right,” she declared, “but Scotland Yard delivered a message by courier late last night-- something about poisoning of young women-- and you're coming with me on this one.”

 

[The particulars of this case will explored in a stand-alone adventure, though that is a story which does not warrant inclusion in entirety in a love story such as this.]

 

Jenny found that her initial exuberance was tempered only by her later nervousness as they found themselves once more in a carriage, this time on their way to Whitehall Castle to meet with Inspector Kent.

“Cease your fidgeting, Jenny, you look fine,” Vastra sighed as she peeked out the window at the world beyond their rolling carriage.

“Fine, Ma'am?” Jenny half-whined, “You look exquisite. A real gentlewoman. Me?” She gestured to herself. “I've never done this before.”

Vastra didn't have to look at her. She had inspected her long in advance of their departure and found her wanting for naught. She had selected a charcoal gray waistcoat with polished antler buttons, a crisp white shirt with a starched collar, and a long, full, black skirt over her shiny patent leather boots. She had her dark chestnut hair parted symmetrically and pinned up in a tidy bun at the base of her skull, topped off with a smart little hat. The ensemble was sharp and professional. “You will be just fine, Jenny Flint,” Vastra assured her, lifting her psychic veil to give her a smile. “You're practically a gentlewoman yourself. Have confidence, Mistress Flint.” She patted her on the knee reassuringly, and watched Jenny try to smile in a convincing show of confidence. She wrung her hands in her lap though, and Vastra noticed she was wearing the gloves that she had gotten her for her birthday. “Out of curiosity, Jenny,” Vastra dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “Are you wearing any other...birthday presents?”

This elicited a real smile now. “Of course, Ma'am.” She drew up the hem of her skirt a few inches and there, peeking very slightly from the top of her boot was the thin handle of a knife.

Vastra's chest swelled with pride. “A professional already, what did I tell you?” They shared a secret smile and then Vastra lowered her veil and got ready to meet the humans.

 

The meeting did not go as well as either of the Paternoster detectives had hoped. Firstly, Inspector Kent was away and they were met by a portly man with a walrus mustache who had introduced himself as Inspector Moore, and bumbled his way through introductions and clumsy recitation of pertinent case details before telling Vastra with “great regret” that she would not be able to view the autopsy files herself as they had been left under the eye of a Doctor Thomas Neil, a chemist by trade, who had been retained as a profiler and informant. The case in question dealt with the agonizing poisoning deaths of several prostitutes and even a couple of socialites in pubs and speakeasies on Bankside. Vastra's mood went from dim to positively stormy the more the man spoke, and Jenny was glad she was wearing a veil, lest her eyes melt poor Inspector Moore on the spot.

“This is hardly detective work,” she snarled, “You have no leads, no motives, no weapons, and have barely linked three deaths together. He may have murdered dozens and yet you cannot even give me that! What you're asking me to do is not bring a man to justice but subject myself to your apeish underworld and pull off an assassination.”

“Well perhaps your assistant, Miss Flint, could be of service--” The poor man had a terrible sweating issue and repeatedly dabbed his broad forehead and neck with a handkerchief. Jenny dismissed herself with nary a word and gave Vastra all the room she needed to begin verbally melting the inspector.

There were echoes of emotion and even words in her mind as she strained to hear what Vastra's volley shots were. What little she gleaned was truly hell-bending. <You pitiful pink apes think so highly of yourselves!> was heard along with very colorful Silurian hissing curses. <You think I would risk my precious companion to go traipsing about Bankside guised as a working girl just because she doesn't speak like an Oxfordian?...You knave! Let not her young appearance be equated with a soft mind or stomach unlike you lot, all yellow with fear and failure to do your jobs!> It went on and on for about fifteen minutes, and then there was some conversation that Jenny did not have the keenness of mind to listen in on, and finally, Vastra emerged, took her by the hand as she stormed from the building, and didn't bother waiting for a carriage to come around for them.

 

“Walk?” Jenny hated to sound like an infant, but her feet were hurting a little already and it was a long walk home.

“I don't trust Inspector Moore or that informant of his,” Vastra hissed, “I don't want our movements tracked.”

“Yes because they're likely to miss a veiled gentlewoman and...well, me.” Jenny sniped incredulously, and more than a little bit testily.

“I've begun a subtle and constant subliminal suggestion,” Vastra explained quietly as they walked, “so I am basically invisible right now.”

“What about me?”

“Not so much.”

“So not at all.”

“Astute as usual,” Vastra complimented her, “Why did you leave earlier?”

Jenny shrugged, and lifted the hem of her coat to reveal a briefing file there tucked into her skirt. “I picked something up from a gentleman waiting there. He was waiting for Inspector Moore, but he was talking to some of the junior Yard blokes and it just seemed....important. Is it?”

“You little simian genius,” Vastra whispered gleefully under her breath as she pulled it free. “You managed to purloin the case details from Doctor Neill!”

Jenny shrugged. “I don';t know why I did it but I sensed that you didn't trust those strangers today--”

“I don't.”

“And the other was that it might be advantageous to not show my face around there. That doctor for example, I didn't get a good look at him. He was always faced away from me. I just grabbed the file and moved on. I figured you would handle the details.”

“Mistress Flint, we shall make a detective of you yet,” Vastra declared, and ushered her down one short cut or another. “Our own investigation shall begin henceforth, and absolute silence with Scotland Yard simultaneously. Something isn't adding up to me.”

The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering about bars and opium dens, casually casing out possible targets and informants. Not much was new to them but Jenny figured that now she at least had an idea of things to look for. Things were looking like she would have to be a decoy anyway, especially when she found that a few of the working girls who had once let her live in the brothel with them when she had been particularly poor had either gone missing or passed away in the last year or so.

It was after nightfall by the time they were close to home, when Vastra snatched Jenny's hand. “Jenny, go home. Keep your knife at the ready and go home.” She handed her the case file she had been so jealously guarding all day.

“What--”

“Jenny no questions now. Do as I say.” Vastra snarled urgently. Her eyes were terrifying now and filled with concern. Jenny could only nod and set off at a sprint, clutching the precious file and her knife.

She didn't know what had spooked Vastra but she had never promised to stay away. Nothing out of the ordinary met her on her way back, so she doubled back once just to be safe and entered through the servants' entry.

 

“I think the lady should see a doctor,” Vastra calmly informed the three men who crouched over an obviously intoxicated woman. A fourth had her cradled in his arms in a very provocative manner. If she had been less informed and wise, she might not have noticed this in time.

“Don't worry, Ma'am,” the fourth man growled in a decidedly non-intoxicated and very menacing voice, “my girl here just needs a good night's sleep is all.”

The other three fellows were absolutely stumbling drunk. Based on their setting and opportunistic attitudes, Vastra curled her lip. As much as she was concerned about the instigator, and their intended victim, these weren't paragons of virtue either. A cursory glance of their distinguishing attributes in the streetlight illuminated several pirate tattoos and a prison brand here or there. They were hired cover, she decided, bad news wrapped around even worse news. “I rather think not,” she responded defiantly.

“I rather think...yes.” sneered the man nearest her, and suddenly Vastra was faced with no less than three pistols and two knives.

 _Why do I keep picking up strays?_ Vastra had to wonder right before the man on the left suddenly screamed like a demon and fired wildly. The sound of the gunshot, the acrid, stench of powder igniting, and gouts of rich blood in the air made for a startling distraction. Vastra hit the ground with a rolling motion, righted herself, and snapped out her tongue. It uncoiled like a forked bullwhip and shattered a metacarpal as it slapped away the second pistol.

The third man had also jumped but stumbled in his drunkenness onto the fourth man and the woman who was now moaning in an awful state. He struggled to rise and aim at Vastra in the near darkness but it was too thick for human eyes.

Luckily for Vastra, she wasn't human. She snatched a hidden dart from a secret pocket in her corset and whipped it underhanded into the third man's throat with fatal accuracy. A double-handed blow from the first man caught her behind the left ear, through thankfully it was buffered by her bonnet. She stumbled only once and wound her feet in an arc beneath her as she pivoted to slam a stiletto in between the his ribs. He had a punctured lung and more, but he reached out and gripped her sleeve before falling right upon her. She cursed in Silurian as she realized the second man was rushing her with a knife and she was far too encumbered to fully avoid it.

Sparks flew in an instant as Jenny, appearing out of seemingly nowhere, moved to block with her sword, the two blades impacting at a perpendicular path, issuing a shrill scraping noise just before his knife blade snapped like a toy against her superior steel. Vastra wasted no time throwing free her burden, but Jenny was surprisingly fast, deflecting the damaged knife up in an arc before yanking her katana back up and right through her assailant's torso.

A wave of blood turned black and gold with shadow and dim streetlights erupted and rained upon her. She swiped at her eyes with her sleeve and looked up to see Vastra running past her with another unladylike curse that she had regrettably learned to translate. She saw a woman lying prone on the ground, gripped in spasms of pain, but her employer wasn't even looking that way. Jenny unslung Vastra's dragon-headed Odachi from her back and hurled it in that direction as she moved onto the wretched woman in the street.

Of course Vastra caught the weapon in the air without looking and lashed it to her back as she sprinted into the shadows. She returned before too long though. Nothing. The fourth man was just gone and she hadn't seen his face or gleaned anything useful from his mind. She blamed herself, but there was no time for that. Constables' footsteps sounded on the cobblestones, drawn by the sounds of scuffle and the gunshot. A crowd would soon gather and Vastra wasn't sure if she could hide her identity now with all the people who would be looking right at her. She had no choice. It would have to be up to Jenny.

<I need to disappear. Can you handle this?> she called out to her student.

There was no time for Jenny to mentally voice it but her affirmative was obvious. She pulled her scarf over her face to conceal herself somewhat. Vastra sprinted past in a blur of superhuman speed and psychic mist. Jenny had no time to think as she tossed her weapons into the storm. No questions could be asked about her.

“He said...I would be...beautiful.” The woman below half-choked, half-slurred in her arms.

“Come again?” Jenny whispered before the woman violently vomited up onto the street and both of them.

“C...cream...”

“Please...what?” Jenny strained to hear her but the woman had lost consciousness and then the crowd closed in.

 

“Just...cream? You're sure that's all she said?” Vastra was incredulous and stumped which was a negative combination.

Jenny shrugged and rubbed her still-wet hair with a towel. She smelled like spices and exotic oils from her bath. Vastra wondered if that could be blamed for her lack of focus. “That and 'he said I would be beautiful' direct quote.”

“So it must be a cosmetic of some sort,” Vastra mused as she paced the parlor floor, “but there is no evidence of that on any of the bodies nor on this victim from what I can tell. Of course, she's naught but a working girl so I can only imagine how much value the police place on her.” She halted midstride and looked at Jenny who was now slumped in a chair looking worn. “That was outstanding work back there, Jenny. You moved...like one of my sisters.” Her smile was humane and genuine.

It warmed a place in Jenny's heart and suddenly she didn't feel quite so tired. She looked down on the table before them. The knives they had used in the fight were both there along with Jenny's sword. All had been cleaned. Vastra's sword had no doubt received the same treatment but it was mounted above the hearth already.

“How did you ever get away so quickly?” Vastra wondered aloud.

The human shrugged. “I hid my face was all, Ma'am. I told them it wasn't important to question me and they never looked real close. It feels like my brain is about to...” she pantomimed a general bursting motion with both hands.

“It was a very advanced trick for you,” Vastra nodded, “but you saved a life, gained information, and remained anonymous. You're a hero, Jenny. Goodness, if all street urchins could do what you did, I daresay I would have a whole harem!”

There was a stab of jealousy here, but Jenny ignored it, used to Vastra's unintendedly off-color remarks, and was more unsettled about something else. “I took a life tonight too,” she murmured tonelessly, staring hard at the crackling fire.

“To save my life,” Vastra replied, voice now as soft as a blown dandelion. “You're a hero many times this night.”

Jenny shrugged without emotion. “I honestly didn't even think about it. My body moved on its own. I don't regret it if that's what you're thinking.” she glanced up at Vastra. “I just figure I should, you know, feel something for him. All of them. They're humans. Like me.”

“Would you have avoided it if you had seen a way to do so?”

Jenny closed her eyes and let the fire warm her lids. At the same time she let herself experience Vastra only in sound and the faintest trace of her scent. “Of course I would! Just because killing is necessary doesn't make it...hurt less. I guess I just wish they deserved my pity. That might make it harder but it would make me feel less...less...” she struggled for a word.

“Reptilian?”

A hoarse laugh rumbled from Jenny on a single heartbeat. She changed the subject. “Ma'am, I think you ought to let me play the decoy.”

“Not on your--”

“Please! I blend in fine with those girls and they'll accept me. I know some of them. I wouldn't want to see them hurt. Maybe they can even help me?” Jenny's face was imploring but it made Vastra's guts twist unpleasantly. She refused to admit that Jenny did have a point.

“I have had enough of this case, honestly. I might toss it back-- the insult of those cads!” Vastra declared.

“Please! You're only saying that because you see me as a liability. This is a logical move.” Jenny started almost out of her chair as Vastra rounded on her. She opened her eyes just in time to see her crouch before her.

“Listen here you dense little creature,” Vastra seethed suddenly through predatory teeth, piercing her with her eyes, “I don't see you as a liability. I see you as a friend. I admit your talents but why would I, how could I, risk something so precious if I didn't have to? And I don't, quite frankly. It's not my problem, these baboons and their games.”

Jenny's eyes were equally hard. “I'll do it without you if I must.”

The Silurian's expression was full of rage, which Jenny had expected, but also touched with more than a little fear, which she had not. There was a bestial hiss to her sharp words, at once English and Silurian. “You'll _what_ , you wretched little ape? Oh for the love of all your gods I might murder you myself and save the Lambeth Poisoner the trouble!”

Jenny forced herself not to escalate the situation. She cocked her head and gave a little smile, her voice coming out strong, with no need for volume. “You know I'm right this time, Ma'am.”

The Great Veiled Detective stopped her furious, lashing pacing, and her gradual sad smile told Jenny everything she needed to know. She was still taken off guard when Vastra reached out and stroked her fleshy, warm bottom lip. They were very close now, and the fearful, angry tension had been replaced somewhat by another kind. There was affection to be read upon her countenance now. “You've grown up, Jenny,” she murmured.

<Trust me,> Jenny whispered into her mind. With the words was a door opening now between them, and through it both ways spilled all matter of worry, conviction, raw, intense expression, and trust. Vastra sighed in spite of herself.

<Yes my dear. I do.>

 

Leaving Jenny alone at night to pose as a barmaid here, a chambermaid there, or even a cook sometimes, was difficult for Vastra to stomach. She came home late, occasionally not at all if she couldn't get away without being seen, and in various states of cleanliness-- all dirty, but the odoriferous results of her work varied greatly. There were dark circles around her eyes after the first week, but Jenny never faltered, never gave Vastra reason to doubt, and never distracted her from her own work.

Vastra couldn't concentrate most days. She would reach out to Jenny periodically, assuring herself more than her assistant that she was all right. Something wasn't adding up with the case files, testimony, and autopsy results. The records were ludicrously unhelpful given that both doctors and police officers had written off most of the women as having complications with alcohol, venereal disease, or other normal maladies for the wretched, the less worthy. It was shoddy detective work, moreover it was lazy, but it was also disgusting to see the ideals of “noblesse oblige” thrown right out the window with every sentence. Stupid apes. Thank the goddess for Jenny.

Jenny, who she suddenly felt, both very near, and very troubled. She raced toward the back door and threw it open. She opened her mouth to speak, but Jenny was staggering and falling onto the back steps. She rushed forward to support her and the human slapped a single wet white pill into her hand. The outer coating was runny and sticky. “I found him,” she choked.

Everything began to fall into place but priorities sorted themselves quickly. Vastra held her hard by the arms and made her look at her. Jenny was positively green around the gills and her heart rose into her throat at the sight. “Jenny, did you swallow any of it?” If she had been capable of sweating, she would have been utterly clammy now as Jenny looked up with unfocusing eyes and helplessly nodded.

Jenny felt the tears running from her eyes now, as Vastra jammed two fingers into her abdomen without a word of warning. Her stomach obliged and she began purging fiery waves of poison right onto the grass and brick of the back walk way. It was like acid tearing backwards, beyond her control, from some deep recesses of her body, and right out her mouth. It was horrific and she crouched there with her mistress and hated it. For the first time since she had entered Vastra's employ, Jenny Flint wished to God that she could just die.

 

On and on it went in fact. How much she had swallowed and precisely how long it had been in her system, Vastra could not know, but that she had managed to avoid swallowing the second tablet, and had returned home, had undoubtedly saved her. She was ill for days, despite all of Vastra's efforts, treating her with tannic acid and a compound of activated charcoal. The morning sun's light, even through just a crack in the curtains, and the regular street noise that the human had often found so comforting, now made her seize and convulse violently, so much so that Vastra found herself sedating Jenny with a low dose of chloroform just to make her momentarily _stop dying_. By day she worked in Jenny's room, unwilling to leave her for more than minutes at a time, her eyes operating in nearly total darkness, researching and analyzing the pill Jenny had risked her life to bring. By night, she slept only very lightly, with Jenny, who moved in and out of agonizing consciousness and tormented dreams like a sailor adrift at sea.

 

Jenny awoke slowly in a very dim room she wasn't immediately sure was hers, and realized that all the heavy Persian rugs from the lower floors had been hung over all her windows and walls, killing all glossy surfaces and stifling all windows. It was immediately disorienting as she had momentarily thought herself to be suspended on the ceiling.

“It's to dampen the noise and the light,” whispered Vastra beside her, “the stimulation made you almost epileptic.”

“I had a terrible dream,” Jenny moaned weakly, closing her eyes again. It was as if she had to relearn to control her body. It was so disconnected after three days of disuse. Feebly, she wished for her eyes to open. In darkness, all she saw was the dream...but worse, and that helpless feeling that accompanied it. She felt Vastra feel her head as if to test her temperature, and then hold her hand.

“It's almost over, Jenny. I know who it is, and I am going to make him pay so dearly for what he has done.” Vastra's voice was electric venom.

“How long?”

“It's been three days,” came Vastra's reply, and Jenny's eyes didn't open but filled with tears. Her body hurt as if each fiber had been individually grated with sandpaper.

“He'll get away, Ma'am.”

“No. No, sweet Jenny, no. I know where he is. I know who he is, and where, and you and his other victims have helped me do so.” Vastra paused. “Are you well enough to hear this?” Jenny didn't open her eyes but nodded faintly as if it pained her. “His name is Neil Cream, Jenny. He was acquitted earlier in an incident that police were all to eager to pin on Jack the Ripper. There's more to it, but cream, Jenny. That's what his last victim meant.”

“He said...it would make us beautiful...” Jenny breathed like a ghost. “There wasn't...time. Everyone there. The girls... I needed that pill...”

“Yes,” Vastra agreed, “and so you said before you fainted. That, along with your...symptoms,” she gestured futilely, “and the others' told me why it was so easy to blame alcohol. In this dosage size, the effects are quick but death is long in coming.”

“Bitter...powder,” Jenny gasped, and felt Vastra wipe her brow with a warm cloth.

“Yes, Jenny. It was strychnine poisoning. Not a beauty cream at all, but an odorless rat poison in pill form. I've been treating you, but it would have been for naught had I not anticipated this and trained you for it.” Suddenly excited, she began to explain to Jenny, “Since we began, I've been periodically sprinkling arsenic and other poisons into your food. Just enough to boost your resistance-- and it worked excellently judging by the fact that you were able endure it so long. Isn't that wonderful?”

Jenny was silent only for a second before she managed to spit out a singular, very dirty, curse word in nearly perfect Silurian, followed by, “I hate you.”

Vastra sobered. “I don't care. It saved you... and you have saved many more. Just get well, Jenny, and rest peacefully. I have laid the trap, and on my honor he will be destroyed. I need to know something before I do, though. Did he touch you? Did he, Jenny? Tell me now so that I know how long to torture him.”

“No,” she whispered.

Vastra said nothing but exhaled in relief. As Jenny felt herself spiral toward oblivion again, she felt Vastra's cool, dry lips land on her forehead. Then, she was alone again.

 

Several evenings later, Doctor Neil Cream, fictitiously known as Thomas Neil, and famously known as the Lambeth Poisoner, was stumbling through the streets. He knew a shortcut, and knew that he would have to take it. There was a demon behind him somewhere in the night, and she had badly injured his heel and ankle so he was shuffling. It felt like something was lodged in there still, but he didn't dare look. Adrenaline alone kept him going when normally the pain would have felled him by now. He no longer thought about playing this game of his. Now he was only playing to live. He had to find a crowd and lose that demon. He had injured her, surprised her by throwing a terrible pepper-based powder in her face which had made her momentarily blinded or at least distracted. She hadn't been expecting that, but he wasn't stupid enough to believe that she would be delayed for long, even though a human would have been incapacitated with pain. He hadn't even tried to dispatch her himself. She was deadly, even wounded.

 _Almost there._ There was a bar close by and he would hide in there.

That was his last thought before a patch of pure darkness moved and he felt the kiss of metal at his throat and a hardened grip that guided him by the shoulder into the shadows of a nearby box plant that was closed for the night, facing only the Thames on one side. No one would find them here.

He was begging now, wordlessly, hopelessly frightened, wondering if there was any to reach his knife, when he was shoved roughly to the ground and the slim crescent's moonlight fell on his attacker. At first, it seemed to be the demon woman, with a rough scaly face and wide dark eyes with a grimacing, black maw. No, it was just a mask. Not a demon at all, he realized as the mysterious woman pulled free the shield and revealed herself. “Jenny?” he coughed, incredulous. Was this luck or a terrible curse? He couldn't decide. “You...you should be...” his words were strangled by a bestial shriek of pain as she casually stepped on the throwing star that had been embedded in his heel, sending it slightly deeper. Her face was an oval of moonlight, her features dark, cold, and as unyielding as stone.

“Tell me why,” she commanded, “Tell me why you did this, and I will spare you from _her_.”

 _“Jenny_!”

The two humans turned as one to where Vastra strode purposefully down the path. Her face was streaked with raw patches of scales that looked, even in near darkness, damaged, rough, and tender. Knowing that he had hurt her even a little made Jenny tighten her grip on her bone-handled knife. As for Doctor Cream, his short-lived relief at having his demon revealed to be human, deserted him now. Now was something much worse-- a real demon, and a ghost.

“Step away, Jenny,” the real demon snarled, “I don't need you to judge a human. Leave him to me.”

“Jenny what _is_ that thing?” Cream screamed, voice cracking. _I'll take my chances with a ghost_ , he decided.

Vastra was beyond furious and her throat burned. She held herself in check—barely-- as Jenny inexplicably leaned down and whispered something in his ear. His eyes never left Vastra's slightly burned face, but whatever there was in Jenny's words, made him look even more afraid. He looked at the Silurian Death Mask that now hung at her belt. That's how she had seen even in the dark, Vastra realized. Jenny had been _stalking_ him, unbeknownst even to her. Her admiration for Jenny let her be still even now.

“No, no look at me, you bastard,” Jenny growled, “tell me.” Her knife hand never shifted off target. “Tell me and I'll let humans deal with you. If not, we will make sure they never find enough of you to identify. I swear on my life.”

“I am Jack the Ripper you lizard-screwing whore!” he screamed so hard that spittle flew out of his mouth.

Jenny's face twisted into a mirror of Vastra's, even without the mask in place. “You pathetic, sadistic fool. Playing your god games. You make me sick. You're not even a good liar. Fortunately, your arrogance has undone you.”

The Poisoner's hidden pocket knife flipped out of his sleeve. “Die, whore!”

As a sixteen-year-old girl, months shy of her birthday, she would have been helpless against such a monster of a man, caught and frightened into stasis by his evil, and overmatched entirely. She would have been dead in a heartbeat. Things were different for Jenny Flint now. Before Vastra could call out to her, she read the subtle twitch of muscle before he had even fully committed to the motion, and she barely had to twitch in response.

First was the pressure on his heel with the very tip of her toes that made him scream and convulse with agony, causing an instant of hesitation. It was simple after that to use the index knuckle of her off-hand in opposition to his wrist bones, causing him to drop the knife with a worthless clatter.

Then it was with tears in her eyes that Jenny moved her right arm in a forward slicing arc. It was lightning even in Vastra's eyes, for she had begun moving in advance of previous moves' resolution. Despite the show of ease, however, no one could fathom the heaviness of grief that weighed down her stroke like many ghosts of poor women all crying out at once. Jenny sliced through all of it soundly. This wasn't about revenge.

The blood of the Lambeth Poisoner, Thomas Neil, or Neill Cream, and anyone else he had ever been, was a torrent of garnet in the wake of Jenny's blade. She didn't loosen her grip on it either, even as his body slumped, gurgling, and then limp at her feet, until Vastra was appeared at her side. She looked stricken, and grabbed Jenny up into a fierce embrace.

It was only when their thoughts intertwined with all walls removed around this moment that Jenny felt safe enough to feel anything. “Make the bad man go away,” she ground out between her teeth.

<Look away, Jenny. This isn't for you to see.> Vastra told her in their minds as she backed up a half pace to look down into her tired, grieving eyes. Oh but such strength still burned in them. The primal part of Vastra's psyche howled in ruthless glory.

Jenny found herself wanting to protest, to tell Vastra that she accepted all of her. Yet, there was knowledge of this in those wintry blue eyes. No more needed to be said, so Jenny silently moved to pass her.

Vastra breathed a sigh of relief and looked down upon her warm bloody meal when suddenly Jenny was there again, just for a second, and so close their breath commingled. She had only an instant to gaze into that face and the mind behind it, nakedly, wholly accepting of her. Their lips met, hot and cold, fiercely, impulsively, Jenny the aggressor, and Vastra helpless as a baby, in a kiss that culminated in a single thought. Whose it was, neither could say, except that perhaps it had come from both.

< _Yes_. >

Then, Jenny was gone as if she had not been, and Vastra was left to do what even her dragon cousins in the menagerie could not match in grace, speed, nor horror.


	4. Match

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Their courtship ensues, a mixture of Silurian and human rituals, and a dance of swords that is also a dance of hearts and minds.

Part IV

 

Things were different now, but subtly so. No longer did they worry about a gaze too long or an accidental touch. Vastra dwelled on that final moment of that night when she had finally fed upon a human with Jenny present. It had been different. Jenny hadn't been afraid; hadn't turned her back in disgust but rather to simply give her privacy. Afterward, she had dabbled at Vastra's face with her kerchief, here, up on the cheek, and again near her throat, her hands steady and kind.

But what did it mean? To Silurians, it was specific. The following actions were both tradition and biological memory. Yet, Vastra had faltered, instead choosing to take sweet Jenny by the hand and lead her home rather than subject her to the difficulties of Silurian courtship.

Jenny Flint, for her part, was experiencing a rush of different thoughts. Her days remained much the same though there was more tension between them now. It wasn't uncomfortable in a bad way because there was a known affection rested there, but she wondered why Vastra had never deigned to kiss her again, and Jenny, suddenly questioning if Silurians even did that sort of thing, had decided not to attempt it a second time.

Could she even be with a lizard woman anyway? Were they...moved...by the same things? Possessed equally of the requisite...features? Jenny blushed over the laundry she was supposed to be hanging.

It wasn't impossible, she reminded herself, thinking back to Vastra's poor injured face back that night. They had bathed privately. (Their mental intimacy had not translated physically in that way.) After that, it had been Jenny who sat beside Vastra in her bed, gingerly rubbing the medicine into her scales so that they would heal faster.

Perhaps she had fabricated or misread Vastra's gasp as Jenny's fingers caressed the soft scales near her throat, or the webbing of her reddened scalp ridges, but she had not misinterpreted the intense unblinking sear of Vastra's stare, nor had she missed the tightening of fingers on her hips, like a vise.

“Stay with me,” Vastra had murmured.

“I shouldn't,” Jenny replied more out of reflex than anything, with her face burning, and had left, but returned again the next night and the one that followed. She had never been asked to stay again, nor had Vastra touched her in such a way, but there remained that emotion.

“The laundry dries best in the sun, you know.” It was Vastra who had startled her now, wearing a white linen shirt decorated about the shoulders with woven silk, its collar adapted in the style of Silurian dress armor, protecting the neck. She also wore a fine buff-colored vest. Her pants had the waistband of trousers but were a slightly less pleated hakama pant. She was wearing her swords too, the shorter one on her back, and the Odachi at her hip, where she rested her dark gloved hands upon its handle as one might rest upon a walking stick, or, as Jenny had seen Eastern warriors in antique images.

“Excuse me, Ma'am?”

“Honestly Jenny, the laundry is practically dry in the basket. I just wondered what was taking so long.” The voice was haughty as ever but the eyes and lips were full of teasing, so Jenny allowed herself to smile and roll her eyes like a teenager.

Vastra began to help her hang the laundry and in no time they were finished. “Well?” Jenny asked as she reached for the basket, “What's with the roguish getup?”

She pretended to be offended. “ _Roguish_? I've come to ask you to a formal duel, except that you're toiling around like some kind of despondent maid!”

“Fancy that,” Jenny retorted with a giggle, “Who's dueling anyway?”

Vastra looked upward as if in thought. “Let's just say it's a participatory ritual and not a spectatorship.”

 _Oh_. “I'll get changed then,” Jenny eyed Vastra's clothes. “I take it you want me in something more... roguish?”  
“ _Formal_ , Jenny, but practical if you please,” Vastra groaned with played exasperation, “and I'll have you know the Sultana had this shirt made for me.” Her eyes twinkled, daring Jenny to be jealous.

“Right then,” Jenny replied, refusing to be baited, “but won't this heat make me a 'sweaty mammal' and unsuited for your company, oh Madame?” Jenny pressed on, “I do believe you're having a go at me.”

Vastra's hands left her sword and landed more gently than either of them really would have liked, on Jenny's waist. “Dear pink ape child, I already occupy your presence, sweating or not, and your odor is quite inoffensive, especially given your...” she leaned in now to whisper in Jenny's ear, “ _Peculiar hairlessness_.”

Jenny jumped away at this, her fair face ablaze in a deep magenta. “How, how could you know about... about _that_?” she sputtered.

“Oh dear, perhaps that wasn't the right moment for that,” Vastra clicked her tongue in regret, setting the fingers of her right hand to her brow. “Dear me, but you know I _have_ tended to you while you were very ill. You couldn't be left to marinate in the filth of the streets. I've seen you...a few times by now, Jenny,” she informed her as delicately as possible.

More reddening. Vastra wondered if she was about to have an aneurysm when Jenny finally lit back up into actual speech. “You, you damnable _pervert_!”

“Now, now, dear, it was necessary as I have said, and I pride myself in clinical detachment,” Vastra waved her hand in a calming, casual way. She tried not to imagine what she had seen. True to her word, she really hadn't looked at Jenny as much as possible, out of respect, but the fact that the young human had clearly taken a regular razor to her legs, underarms, and even some of her pubic hair had always alarmed and intrigued her. She tried to clarify this in the most flattering way that she could devise, but Jenny was unmoved.

“Well, I did live with whores,” she admitted sheepishly, which of course Vastra knew, but it still obviously disturbed her apprentice.

“Your commitment to hygiene is appreciated, Jenny. Please forget my indiscretion. It wasn't meant to be a judgment. Do as your are comfortable and be dressed.” Vastra gently patted the neatly combed hair at the crown of Jenny's head. “I should like to command your attention for more positive pursuits.” Jenny didn't answer, but turned and ran back toward the house. She would return, Vastra knew, from both instinct and mental evidence, but their duel would be, as apes would say, without kid gloves.

 

 _The nerve of that ridiculous reptile!_ Jenny fumed as she sprinted up the stairs and into her room, pulling free her apron and the buttons along the back of her neck as she went. There was no denying the instinctual thrill that had lanced through her and settled in the pit of her belly, but that in no way had diminished Vastra's need of a sound beating.

Dress dropped to the floor and discarded, she tore into her drawers. She settled on a pair of tan breeches that ended just below her knees, and wrapped the ends up before tucking them into high leather boots which she tied speedily and tucked the laces into the tops to ensure they wouldn't come loose.

 _Sweaty indeed!_ She thought as she pulled on a crisp white shirt with a collar and paused only long enough to deliberate over a tie. She loved ties and had many in her collection. Alas, she had none the color of Vastra's pretty eyes, so she selected a deep emerald silk one instead, whipped it about her neck in an efficient and handsome full-Windsor, before tucking the loose end into her shirt. A matching vest with jewel-like shine followed and she took only a heartbeat to admire how it hugged her body before she realized she needed gloves. The seal colored leather ones with the reinforced palms were selected and went on like a second skin.

Snatching up her katana from her sword rack was automatic and it came to her hip securely with a leather strap as she charged out the door. She redid her hair in efficient sweeping motions, securing pins and small combs in place as she hurried back down the stairs, out the back door, and straight for the greenhouse where, gods willing, she would skin herself a lizard.

 

Vastra's face was an impassive mask as Jenny took her position facing her a few paces away. As she did, she let her emotions flow out of her completely as she had been trained. She knew that this kind of duel was highly ritualized and sacred to the proud Silurian warrior culture. Despite her personal frustrations, the grounds were not a place for pettiness. It wasn't a brawl, though it could certainly become quite dangerous and involved, but more akin to meditation in motion, focused on technique and skill. This was Vastra's most hallowed art.

It was customary in Jenny's culture to salute one another when dueling with sabers, so the Silurian custom of the same was not foreign, but since they were holding Oriental blades, they faced one another and bowed at the waist, to honor their weapons, the tools of the art. Then, they each did an about face away from one another and, without looking at the other, traded their real weapons for training ones. It wasn't so much for the risk of injury but out of respect for their weapons. Vastra was loathe to dirty, dull, nick, and otherwise ruin her weapons, and this had rubbed off on Jenny as well. In a real fight, the ideal was to draw one's sword, make one lethal cut, and return it to the scabbard without a bunch of clashing and flourishing. This would not be that. Hopefully.

Jenny hurried to slide a long practice katana in place of her own, and picked up some metal disks that would simulate throwing stars, as well as a small wooden knife that she slid against the small of her back in a little leather strap. She had considered a whip as well, but decided that it was too unwieldy in such quarters. She clicked her heels together, signaling her readiness, heard Vastra do the same, and they both turned around.

Jenny drew her sword with measured slowness, sank low in her opening stance, planted on both feet, weapon out before her. She had never prepared to go all-out against her teacher, but she refused to be intimidated.

For a moment, all was still. Vastra had mastered this part of the fight, but sensed Jenny copying her closely. They observed one another, looking for weaknesses in stances, openness in guards, a lapse in focus, or anything to exploit. There was virtually nothing to see, and the duel came to resemble a stalemate.

“Don't be nervous, Jenny,” Vastra spoke in a gentle voice, “it's just for us. There is no shame in losing to me.”

“Same to you,” Jenny murmured, her eyes fixed on Vastra's, her mind planning her assault.

“Remember our differences. Don't push too hard and get hurt. That's not what this is about. You're...only human after all,” Vastra continued. It was a bait, and Jenny fell for it, but not in the way she had expected.

Aware that making the first move was not advantageous to her in this situation, Jenny shifted her grip on her sword to a back-handed grip, rotated downward and around, and whipped three disks at once, right at Vastra's head—from below. Predictably, the Silurian dodged by ducking, but Jenny had already thrown another, and another, in hopes of catching Vastra off balance for an instant. The Silurian was way too fast. She jumped, deflected, kicked out, leaped, and spun between, under, over, or to the side of each projectile like a dancer, never taking her eyes off her opponent until the last second.

Suddenly, Jenny was upon her, having rushed through the flurry, sword out. One, two, three, Jenny swung cleanly. She was almost never flashy. She couldn't afford to be, especially against her, but Jenny was a minimalist by nature, always a fan of solid lines and efficiency. Vastra had never told her, but she secretly respected the effect it had had on her martial art. Vastra only narrowly avoided her three strikes, one high slash, one thrust, and one diagonal. In fact, she was now on the defensive, and Jenny seemed intent on driving her into the corner. One two three. Jenny had a rhythm. She didn't have to look at her targets at all. Her eyes remained level and focused on Vastra's, mindful of her sword, and not letting her get a chance to use it for anything other than blocking or parrying. She didn't have the room.

It was time to mix things up, Vastra decided, and waited till Jenny was in backswing with her blade, ready to parry her sword and strike for a win. From her back she pulled another blade, a clone of her shorter sword, and trapped Jenny's blade between hers. The dark eyes widened but only an instant as Jenny twisted sideways cleanly to avoid impact and full entrapment. Her sword was free but now it was Vastra's turn, and unlike Jenny, Vastra was very flashy. Two blades wheeled about at Jenny, the long one like a shield in its swing, protecting her from any assault, and the short one striking out to try to tag Jenny about the arms and midsection. She had her trapped now in a frontal siege, unable to rotate away from the attacks or launch any of her own for her own sword was dealing with both of Vastra's.

On the other hand, Vastra, being faster, was free to swing high and low, not quite catching Jenny anywhere, but always close. Jenny kept two hands on her own sword to stop it from flying out of her hands with each impact. She couldn't draw another weapon even if she did have one (which Vastra was sure she did), and soon the match would be over.

Jenny, however had noticed something about Vastra's advance. The short sword was in her left hand, which wasn't alarming. In fact, it was probably to be expected, but the swing of the longer sword, being heavier and larger, was very slightly slower than a swing of the short. Wielded in Vastra's dominant hand, the difference was almost negligible. Almost. It was time to be daring if she was to salvage the match.

She had been counting the rhythm of Vastra's attack, and just as she was sweeping her blades back, now Jenny moved toward the strike, refusing to let her eyes close reflexively as she did so, forward toward Vastra's right hand, blocking her left with her sword and simultaneously disturbing the downward route for the left. Then immediately, she did what Vastra had not imagined she would-- she took her right hand off her sword-- and nailed her with a three-inch punch right in the solar plexus with a loud, sharp _kiai_.

Without both hands on her sword, she lost her grip a bit and her guard collapsed under the pressure of Vastra's blade. She managed with sheer dumb luck not to drop it, but wasn't fast enough to block as Vastra kicked one leg out from under her with an arcing heel. She stumbled hard, hit the ground with one knee, rotated off of it and away as Vastra's long sword descended from above, and swung her opposite leg around swiftly to try for a leg sweep. Unfortunately, Vastra, wise to the strategy, also rotated, light on her feet, executed a little flip over it, and upon descent, kicked Jenny sharply with her heel.

Lurching forward, sword lost now, Jenny tumbled over her head and struggled to right herself. Vastra was practically on top of her now. From the kneeling position, she punched upward and managed to catch Vastra at a lucky angle, which caused her to flinch and with a swift grab, Jenny twisted the short sword out of her hand. Using that as a feint, she again went for a frontal assault, wrapped her arm around Vastra's arm and twisted her whole body with it, causing Vastra to drop her blade and pull away. Both unarmed, it became a footwork game, trying to move within or around the others defenses. At one point they were even back to back, stepping, arcing their feet, trying to trip, trying to throw and grab, punch, or jab, and working to stay one move ahead of the other. Jenny had not come into this match with a real hope of winning, but she refused to believe that she couldn't at least make it a challenge. Vastra on the other hand was having some serious doubts given Jenny's improvements. Had it not been for her heightened hormones and senses, it could have been a draw, but she decided that it was not her destiny to lose to a human today.

Jenny found herself grabbed now by the shoulder. She twisted hard to break Vastra's grip and pinwheeled her arms to evade further attempts while using her feet to dodge joint kicks and sweeps. Her heart was pounding and sweat was running into her eyes. She couldn't wipe them, so she just pressed forward, even half-blinded in some moments. Vastra's blows kept coming like snake strikes, and every time Jenny moved to strike, she blocked now with elbows and knees.

Vastra had once referred to the joints of the arms and legs as limbs, used in conjunction with feet and hands to strike, block, and grab. Now she put that into practice. When Jenny roundhouse kicked, there was an elbow meeting her. When she punched, there was a knee. It hurt like hell. It was an impenetrable defense without weapons.

But she did have one.

Drawing her knife immediately, she moved as if to thrust but at the last minute tossed it at Vastra's chest and tumbled to the side, taking the long way around the shield of eight limbs, and coming up right beneath Vastra to strike with her knuckle extended to the inside of her ankle. The Silurian did come down now, and the duel became a wrestling match.

They grappled now, trying for holds, to twist away, or to subdue. Vastra pressed her protege's head into the mat, but an inch away was Jenny's knife, which she snatched before Vastra realized, and jabbed it into her arm without looking. This gave her an opening, and she turned over the lizard woman and twisted them for a choke hold. Just before she could close it up though, something vaguely wet wrapped around her wrist and she saw Vastra whip her own head around just before she was yanked onto the ground, with the Silurian now squarely upon her, breathing hard, even as she retracted her forked tongue. The duel was over, and utterly forgotten in an instant.

“What _is_ it about you that makes me so _incensed_?” Vastra growled, her lips parting over her teeth, gently against Jenny's ear. She missed the moment Jenny bit her lip as she trembled from the sensation.

“I haven't the faintest idea, Ma'am.” Jenny replied shakily, trying to ignore the way Vastra's skin warmed to her own temperature, and her weight pressed against her maddeningly. She felt her take a deep inhale and couldn't suppress a shiver as the lizard woman's purr of appreciation vibrated through their bodies.

Vastra's face appeared above hers. “None at all?” she teased gently, her teeth gleaming.

“I am as clueless as you are about this turn of affairs,” Jenny assured her, and Vastra loved the way her beauty mark accentuated her innocent grin. “What are we doing, Ma'am?”

“Nothing you don't want, I promise,” Vastra assured her, correctly reading a little fear in Jenny, “but I don't know what you want.”

“You're in my head,” Jenny teased, “that's more than most friends.”

Friends. Never had such a precious, special word seemed so hateful; so much so that Vastra couldn't hold back her frown. “Perhaps, but there's always room for confusion.” She let her mind open to Jenny instead. <What if I want to be more than...friends?>

Her brown eyes were pools of emotion beneath her. She opened her mouth as if to speak. <That isn't confusing at all, see?> That innocent, gentle smile was disarming.

Blue eyes blinked once and then again. < Jenny, I don't know how to court you. My ways... don't seem to appeal to you so easily.> She felt it from Jenny then. A piece of a memory, sensation, emotion. Then it all seemed absurdly easy, and everything made sense. What she wanted, they had done before. There needed to be no guessing.

Jenny waited, so patient as always, and closed her eyes gratefully as Vastra's lips descended, soft and cool, upon her own. A match was struck within her and flared to life in a delicate but enduring glow like a dancing butterfly swirling sky and earth with each wing beat. She pressed up toward Vastra who supported her head and pulled her close, then into a sitting position. Their lips parted a hair's breadth here and there but returned again as if it were the most natural state in the world.

Shockingly, Vastra found that it was. The way she would angle her head and Jenny would bend the other way instinctively set her at ease, as did the way she faintly laughed into her mouth. When Jenny pursued, Vastra was open and excited by her exploration of lips, tongue, and teeth. When it was her turn to chase, Jenny was coy and faintly resistant which filled Vastra's veins with fire. Fire for Jenny.

Everything was so new and perfect and when they parted and looked into one another, both knew that their feelings were absolutely mutual. “If you must court me,” Jenny whispered, “Just _be_ with me, Ma'am. >

<Say my name, Jenny,> she commanded.

“Vastra,” Jenny sighed, punctuating it with a kiss until she could no longer speak for the rain of kisses. “Vastra, Vastra.” < _Vastra!_ >

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Match refers to Jenny's role as a matchgirl before Vastra, the literal match that takes place between them, as well as Jenny's ability to be Vastra's perfect match as a partner. It refers also to the flame that has been lit between them.


	5. Fancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vastra discovers one of Jenny's few vices and awakens a slightly jealous shade in her. "That word" is said, and Jenny readies herself for a new experience. Vastra, concerned, has made a more permanent decision.
> 
> Alternately titled: Confession

Part V

 

Jenny was a courtship tyrant, Vastra realized quickly, or else she was getting revenge for years of slavish training. Of course, life went on as usual. Vastra had returned to a strained relationship with Scotland Yard now that Inspector Kent had returned from some personal leave, and Inspector Moore had been reassigned following his debacle with Doctor Neil and Jenny worked in the house as she had always. However, she was prone to small rebellions here and there, refusing to serve tea at Vastra's every whim, and was very strict about when Vastra could work and when it was time to put it all aside and spend time with her. In exchange, she agreed to negotiate turning the former servants' quarters into a dungeon. “In the future,” she would clarify sharply, “and no way, no how am I cleaning it! You want to interrogate villains in there and eat them, you can handle that!” It was with great dismay that Vastra had to admit that hard wood floors were not exactly hygienic for bloody endeavors, and she wasn't in the mood to have the floor redone with stone at that time.

Another change that took place was also at Jenny's behest. “You're a good cook, Ma'am,” she would flatter, batting her pretty eyelashes, “won't you cook for me more often?” And without really agreeing, Vastra found herself several times a month making dinner while Jenny cleaned or studied. They would speak to each other in Silurian when Jenny sat at the kitchen table, and Vastra was impressed with her dedication and growth in the language.

One afternoon, she was baking a minced meat pie when she turned and was distracted by Jenny sitting at the table, eating an apple whole. The human wasn't even looking at her and seemed utterly fascinated by a book in front of her, but the way her sweet lips parted, unsheathed white teeth, and sank them into the ripe red skin and pale flesh of the fruit gave Vastra pause just long enough to look down slightly. Jenny was absently rubbing at a small run in one of her stockings, right at her knee. Vastra swallowed hard as she observed how Jenny had crossed one leg over the other and pulled her skirt over her knee to reach the imperfection. As it was, she could clearly see the shape of her muscular legs all the way down to her slender ankles, revealed by her low-quarter shoes. Was she supposed to read into this? Was it a thinly veiled invitation? Never in her life had Vastra wanted to rend a pair of stockings so badly-- and this coming from someone who had scaly legs.

She approached Jenny from just behind her right ear and planted a gentle kiss just behind her earlobe, which Jenny purred at, and leaned into, offering her a bit of her apple. She knew that Jenny was fascinated by her tongue so she let it slide out and wrapped both tips around the stem to draw it a bit closer, feeling the young woman's eyes, wide and full of awe, watching her. She only took a small bite of the apple, but her right hand came forward and landed on Jenny's knee. She jumped half way out of the chair, cheeks aflame. Vastra was beginning to wonder if she didn't sometimes shock Jenny on purpose just to see her change color. “Madam, I--”

“It's fine, Jenny...I enjoy looking at you,” Vastra tried to assure her, but Jenny only looked more appalled and smoothed her skirt down over her legs.

“I like it, Ma'am...but I'm just not quite ready...for that,” Jenny replied unsteadily, inwardly kicking herself. What she really wanted to do was beg Vastra to touch her more, but she didn't want her dear lizard to think she was some kind of harlot. There were proper ways to court. She wasn't sure if they applied to lizard women, but they certainly applied to her. Besides, Vastra hadn't even said that _word_ to her yet. It wouldn't be right. Not yet.

Vastra on the other hand, though physically frustrated, was not upset with Jenny. She had been impatient and approached her incorrectly. That much was clear, so she thought. She removed her hand from Jenny and instead placed it again on her soft hair, and kissed her delicately on the cheek. She had promised herself to court Jenny correctly, as a human, and she would stay true to her word. She knew that Jenny was already bending the rules of good taste in her culture.

Reflecting on that incident later in her study gave her some clarity but more questions. Their feelings were now revealed and open, and overt affection was allowable now, which was a relief. However, if Vastra had thought that wooing Jenny would be as simple as biting her on the neck-- as Silurians often began-- or by making flowery promises and giving her compliments-- as men tended to begin-- she was wrong. There were cultural inhibitors, for one, and she didn't need her girl to tell her so. In addition, there were logistical things to consider. How would a committed relationship affect their household? Surely Jenny wouldn't continue to cook and clean for her all the time. They would have to be equals. Would she have to hire another maid? What if that one ended up being similarly attractive--

Vastra shook her head. Of course that wouldn't happen. Jenny, being human, had surprised her quite a bit, but she was unique in every way. What a delightful mix of otherwise opposing attributes she was. How could one be so skilled and yet so clumsy? She thought back to a few times when Jenny had tripped or dropped something in the house, and yet it hardly seemed like the same person whose focus could block out any annoyance or pain and still shoot a pistol at a moving target. What other person could accept someone so different, or kill with such solemn efficiency, and yet be afraid of spiders, or obsessed with modesty? Who had she ever met, anywhere, who could rise to meet her in force and temper, and love her even more fiercely than that? As much as Vastra tried to pretend that all humans, in fact all mammals, were the same, the last two years had ripped away this conviction.

 _But no one is like Jenny_. It dawned on Vastra that Jenny might be completely... untouched. It seemed archaic to her to even consider, given that Silurians reached maturity fairly early and spent their long late adolescence in varied dalliances with members of their peers and occasionally slightly more senior members of society before even considering permanent mating. She had been the odd one out during this early period in her life. Perhaps she had played freely with her female cohorts, but she hadn't been emotionally connected to them as anything more than comrades, and the males, while attractive in their prime, displaying vibrant colors and physiques that attracted her friends readily, she had felt strangely unaffected. She could have mated without care—she wasn't as Jenny was, she was sure-- but it wouldn't have meant anything permanent.

But Jenny was different and so were Vastra's feelings and desire for her. Yes, mating would be easy, once she convinced Jenny to abandon, even momentarily, her cultural prudishness. That alone would give the Silurian the relief she craved from these hormones that made her feel at once predatory and as weak as a lamb in Jenny's presence. If she had truly believed that that would be the end to all her problems, she would have done so, but there was so much more. She didn't want to bear young with Jenny necessarily. No, it wouldn't be a bad thing, but for one, it was nearly impossible, and for another, birthing offspring with claws was occasionally fatal. Vastra knew this first hand. She persisted in trying to logically walk through her feelings, but she could not get around that... _that word_. That terribly sentimental, human word! It wasn't like Silurians didn't feel that way. On the contrary, the bonds that comrades, students and teachers, siblings, and mates formed with one another could last the entire duration of their long lives, and even be passed down in the blood sometimes, causing generations of clans to be allied with one another so closely that they seemed like kin. It wasn't based on lust and often made mockery of humans' notions of love that lasted all of one season at times, and at longest, only a century, for that was as long as their mortality allowed.

Even if this was really what she wanted, and even if this is what Jenny wanted-- and there was really no guarantee of that, precisely-- would she want it as long as Vastra? Humans weren't always logical. Even if Jenny could be exposed to Silurian technology and could live a comparably long life, would she _choose_ to? The idea that Jenny could spend the rest of her life with Vastra, but that many years after, she would be left alone, actually frightened Vastra so much that she was lost in thought when Jenny entered without knocking.

No knives were thrown this time. Vastra had grown used to her presence, and Jenny's already elevated status had rendered knocking largely unnecessary. “Ma'am, are you well?” she asked.

“Just deep in thought, Jenny, and we are alone. Use my name.” Vastra came back to herself and smiled at her beautiful ape and beckoned to her eagerly.

Jenny was no longer in a uniform but in a very comely sheer black-over-sapphire and black-trimmed frock that, while simple in decoration and cut, showed off the details of her body, despite not showing any skin above the wrists and below the chin. She smiled easily and approached, letting out a little squeal as Vastra snatched her by the arm and pulled her down into the chair with her. “Whoa! Madame Vastra!” She shouted as she landed across her mistress's lap, and was subjected to a battery of light kisses all over her cheeks and jaw, and finally, one, long drag of a kiss on her hot, waiting mouth. “All right, all right, my darling, _Vastra_.” she consented, emphasizing her sweetheart's name.

“You can call me that other thing too,” Vastra decided, and was filled with joy as Jenny hugged her close. She was so warm, it made Vastra's head swim almost sleepily. If they remained like this forever, that would not be horrible. “What can I do for you, dear?”

Jenny shrugged and revealed something that was in her hand. A wrapped box, tied with string. “This came with the post just now. That's all.” She placed it on the great cherry wood desk and stood to leave, but Vastra stopped her.

“Wait, Jenny, I know what this is,” Vastra informed her, excitedly, “and it's for you.” She began systematically undoing the string and pulling away the paper to reveal a box. Curiously, Jenny leaned over and watched. Within the gold-leafed box was a layer of tissue which Vastra pulled away to reveal several small pieces of what appeared to be chocolate confections.

“My goodness,” Jenny gasped, eyeing the stylizing on the tops of each, along with the seal on the box, “are those imported?”

Vastra's eyes were like bright lights. “Yes! The French have come up with this fascinating new sweet. I have noticed you enjoy sweets and thought you might like to try.”

“The French, eh? Not the Silurians?” Jenny teased, nudging Vastra with an elbow.

The lizard woman laughed. “No, I promise,” and pulled Jenny down onto her knee again as she plucked one from the box. “How is it?” she asked eagerly as Jenny took a careful—sensual-- bite.

“What is this?” Jenny laughed, looking at the remainder of the piece. “It's amazing. Like fruit, but also creamy and--”

“It's a blend of Arabic _sharbat_ ,” Vastra explained with mirroring joy, “the Persians had a variety that I believe to be directly related to this. It's a fruit or vegetable extract sweetened with honey and made into a drink, or even cooled and frozen with snow.”

“That's remarkable! But this... it isn't frozen. How--”

“They blend whipped sugar into it instead. It mimics the French sorbet that is all the rage in Paris. It is quite ingenious actually.” Silurians had not evolved to appreciate sweets nearly as much and so, despite their sensitive palates, they were not accustomed to candy, as Jenny had learned early in her studies. “I think,” Vastra began a little shyly, “this is one area where apes have us completely beat.”

As long as she lived, she would never tire of the light that was Jenny's happy face. The girl was so excited that it was infectious. She watched her pop the second half of her piece into her mouth, close her eyes as she chewed, and enjoy swallowing it, then turn back to Vastra and, without warning, kiss her deeply.

She tasted like sweet, sharp, exotic fruit and chocolate. Vastra had never enjoyed candy much, and certainly not as much as in this moment, but it suddenly became one of her favorite things in the world. “Ah, my one true vice. You're amazing,” Jenny was saying, and then, as if before Vastra could stop herself, there was an exclamation like a blazing bonfire in their minds.

<I love you!>

Jenny's eyes went wider still and her jaw dropped slightly as she stared openly at Vastra, who had brought her free hand to her lips as if to stop herself from speaking, and now quickly looked away, ashamed both at her lack of restraint and her uncharacteristic vulnerability. Jenny hadn't said anything, and it killed her but she was afraid to look up at her dear human, who was still like a stone pillar in her lap. _I've wrecked everything_ , she cursed herself, _how could I? What if she doesn't feel the same? She will think I mean to take advantage of her..._ Vastra bit the tips of her tongue inside her mouth as her stomach seemed to empty into a wide pit and a cold sweat sensation ran down her spine. After a heartbeat, she steeled herself and resolved to meet Jenny as she did everything in life—as a warrior. Tense, she began to raise her eyes to Jenny and tell her something, anything, to make this better, and make it go away.

But now here was Jenny's fingers, grasping her chin, and bringing their eyes in line. Jenny's eyes, Vastra had never seen them so serious or so steady, burning like embers, and her face so strong. In this moment, it was not a human girl who stared into her mind and soul now, but a Silurian warrior in an Englishwoman's guise. Vastra had never been penetrated in this way before, and felt so naked that it was nearly painful. It was so nerve wracking that she actually ceased breathing. “Do you _mean_ that?” Jenny asked her very slowly, in a stern tone.

Vastra wanted to downplay it and surely she could. She could make it a joke, or say, “no not like _that_ ,” but that would demean her feelings, she knew. Moreover, Jenny was practically inside her now, not reading her thoughts-she wasn't nearly powerful enough to do so-- but feeling, certainly, everything between them. She would sense any trace of artifice and be insulted, or worse, _hurt_. The moment stretched taut and at last snapped with Vastra's voice. “I do. Jenny, Goddess help me, I do!”

Jenny choked something like a cough and a laugh at once and stood, nearly upsetting the box of fancy sherbet chocolates, but righting them on the desk quickly without even having to look. Her hands covered her face and she looked about to faint. “You...you can't!” she declared finally.

“Excuse me?” Confused, Vastra could only watch and wait.

“You...have a wandering eye, Madam Vastra, I've seen you look at other women in the marketplace... on the street... at the park....What makes me so special that you could say that?” Jenny's words were both accusation and tortured plea.

Vastra tipped her head. “Love and lust are not the same thing, Jenny, nor are they mutually exclusive.” This seemed to make Jenny even worse so Vastra spoke quickly. “I appreciate beauty wherever I can find it. That isn't wrong, dear. It isn't!” she insisted as Jenny's indignant eyes blazed up again. “But in you, I have it all. Do you know what it means to me to crave you, with every part of my being? To revere you with my soul, _and_ my body? Do you know-- could you know-- what it means when I see something resembling you in other humans? This is why I fight for them instead of eating them. It makes me love them too-- because of _you_!” Her nails bit into her palms. She hadn't realized she had balled them into fists.

Here was Jenny now, again, just as it had been before their first kiss, only this time she looked about ready to smack her, and Vastra was prepared to allow it if it meant they could just carry on as if this terrible thing had not been said. “Love humans?” she asked softly, “But do you desire them?”

“Occasionally in one fleeting moment or another,” Vastra replied honestly, “but the only one I always want in _here_ ,” she thumped her fisted hand over her heart, “is you—and only ever you. Silurian or human, or alien, or ...anything.” There was a pause. “And look... it isn't important. It doesn't have to mean anything to you--”

“I love you too.”

“You what?”

“I. Love. You. Too.” Jenny enunciated each word on its own. “I... I just didn't know if that would even be... a thing...for you.”

“Love?” Vastra blinked.

“For me. I don't know...how it works. If you could be...exclusive with me. I know that that isn't always how your people are.” Jenny looked deeply embarrassed but pressed on. “I do love you though. I'm _in_ love with you, Vastra. I don't want you thinking I'm just some stupid ape either. I know what I'm saying and what it means.”

“I believe you, Jenny,” Vastra swore solemnly as a flicker of hope was allowed to come to light inside her.

“Then that's all I needed, Ma'am,” Jenny smiled, and kissed her. This kiss was very different though, from all the others. It was...for lack of better words, _hot_. So hot, Vastra almost stopped her to check for fever. Almost. Jenny took control, not asking, but commanding Vastra's mouth to part, their lips to explore, to enjoy, and to draw in breath for the next salvo. Their tongues touched, and teased, and at first, Vastra seemed to gain an upper hand as her forks whispered against Jenny's smooth white teeth. It was not to be, however, for Jenny withdrew just a smidge, and that little pink tip darted out to trace the curve of Vastra's cool upper lip. She groaned with pleasure, and as she did, Jenny penetrated her mouth with her tongue, tasting, demanding, and claiming. Something on the verge of panic stabbed Vastra's heart as the deeper, furious part of herself came alive and roared with the blood in her ears. She wanted Jenny, right now, on her desk if it came to that. Her hands fisted in the draping of Jenny's skirt, and she resisted even as Jenny pressed up against her. No, there needed to be something more than this, but good Goddess if this human woman was crushing her resolve as though she were little more than a base beast.

“Jenny, my beauty--” she whispered aloud as Jenny's skirts rose above her knees as she straddled Vastra and pressed their bodies together. “We should--” she got choked off as Jenny's faintly serrated teeth scraped against the underside of her chin. With a snarl, she rose, taking Jenny with her easily, still suspending her feet slightly off the floor before setting her down gently, with great restraint. Hating herself, she clutched Jenny's face in her hands as tenderly as she might a baby bird. “I want this to be special.” They sighed and closed their eyes, resting foreheads together. “I won't do anything untoward... You have my word.”

She sensed Jenny's smile even without seeing it. “Maybe I...want you to do... _untoward_ things to me.” She made a little growl. “You don't know how I've dreamed of this. Of having more of you.”

Vastra pulled her close and hid her face in Jenny's soft tresses. “I know. It is the same with me. Jenny... I don't know how to say this delicately...Well, you aren't my first but I have a feeling that...”

“You're right, my darling. No one.” Jenny confessed. She looked up in earnest. “I'm ready though. I've been ready.”

It was inconceivably hard but Vastra shook her head and tapped her on the nose with love. “Be patient, my love. This is all so new for me too.” They breathed long, calming breaths, with breathless laughter as they shared a moment. “Let's start with this, my glorious one... I should fire you as my maid. I don't want you to work below me. At least... not like this. Become my partner. I'll hire someone else.”

Jenny surprised her by laughing as if she had said something foolish. “Oh please, Ma'am. I'm happy working in the house. I can assist you in all your detective-y stuff, but I'm comfortable in taking care of you. The way I see it, this is also of our teamwork.” Just like that, Jenny had elevated herself. It hadn't been up to Vastra in the first place to choose her lot in life. They were partners already and Jenny made herself indispensable.

“Be off then, my lady. I do have work still yet to do,” Vastra released her, regrettably. If she didn't, though, she would go back on her word.

“While we're negotiating our partnership,” Jenny paused in leaving and looked exaggeratedly thoughtful, “Would you consider raising the budget a bit so I can organize some repairs around the house and also better cuts of meat that don't come from humans?”

Vastra looked equally thoughtful and severe. “As you like, Mistress Flint,” she replied, and popped another sherbet fancy in Jenny's mouth. Laughing, and biting into it, Jenny whisked out of the room, leaving Vastra, not to work, but to begin some important tasks of another kind.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always think of Jenny's personality as being fairly minimalist, given her life before Vastra. She isn't greedy or high maintenance, and I think people mean way more to her than any possession. This is reflected in her fighting style and in her happy acceptance of working the mundane household tasks. IrisSteth astutely pointed out that this probably gives her mind a break from the otherwise crazy life she has with Vastra. 
> 
> I didn't want them to make love with a power dynamic between them, so I wanted to take the time to craft some explanations for a few areas of their relationship that we see in the show that might not make sense to us. One thing that I know some people have a problem with is Vastra's flirtatiousness with Clara Oswald in Deep Breath. It was important for me to shape Vastra in a way that reveals her vulnerabilities, and separates attraction from intellect, and uses her love for Jenny to benefit the society of apes. 
> 
> As I said in the original note before I accidentally deleted (ugh I'm such a monkey), I want this to be a love story from start to finish, and discuss every facet of their relationship, from Jenny's modest, often under-stated identity, to Vastra's abrasive (at times) personality. There are subtleties here that I want brought to life.


	6. Lover

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vastra wants to provide Jenny with the most beautiful experience ever, and more. Things don't go as planned, but Jenny places all her trust in the one she loves, and Vastra gives her everything.
> 
> The smut gets REAL up in here, and the next chapter. You have been warned.

Part V

 

It seemed to have become less unusual as of late for Jenny to wake up a little late. She never failed to do so at a start, becoming conscious all at once, and not really sure where she was or even _who_ she was sometimes. Was she a match girl, sharing a pallet with other girls in a communal room? Was she a lonely young maid with a mysterious employer living above her? Was she in fact, a respected apprentice who would be expected to train and work equally hard from before sunrise to after nightfall? This always seemed the most plausible until she realized that Madame Vastra was not standing over her with a willow switch. A beloved comrade and maybe more, she enjoyed the autonomy of a noble woman, and she was just half a year over eighteen. Of course, this was half a year to nineteen, which had begun to bother her only a little. Perhaps it was because she'd had it on good authority that her younger sister, having gone to finishing school, had been presented at court last year and become betrothed not long after. No, marriage had not begun to appeal to her since her last row with Vastra about it. Yet, there was something about her current situation that made her feel somehow, in limbo. Life with Vastra every day was perfect for her, but looking forward in the years she had begun to wonder exactly what would become of them. Love, while in practice was not easy, it was certainly established firmly, and evidently so was money, which would equate to a comfortable existence, but Jenny had to admit that the less romantic, flowery, fairy tale parts were a mystery.

Each morning, early, or just after sunrise, as it was now, she had awoken from dreams of most pleasurable torture with suggestions and hormones alike, all featuring Vastra in various stages of undress. Each time her restraint faltered, Vastra would pull away with infuriating calm, and kiss her so chastely she wanted to swoon as equally as she might wish to scream, and tell her, “Wait just a bit, Jenny, be patient.” It was getting hard to even think about the real world of the future as she was constantly drowning in more pressing and unladylike urges. Last night had been one such moment. Sometimes kisses were so easy, and Jenny found herself always wanting to kiss even if she pretended she didn't, and even if in public, she maintained her distance and disciplined, structured behavior.

Vastra would tease her and call her prudish at times, but last night, as Jenny thought back to it, it hadn't been her holding back. “I have work to do,” Vastra had told her, and looked about to head to her study. Jenny had been poised at the base of the stairs and moved toward her like a magnet. It had begun as a gentle kiss goodnight, but become more as Vastra's cloud-light kisses had extended down her neck, shoulder, arm, wrist, and hand, peppering her flesh with affectionate caresses as she had retreated upward. At last they had found themselves at arms' length, and in an all-too-familiar charged silence that had become standard practice recently. There had been hesitation on both ends, but Jenny was sure she had given a gentle tug, not to pull her hand away, but to draw her love closer, and like a sleepwalker, Vastra had complied. They had kissed softly, lovingly, on the steps, and then at the top again, and finally in the door way to Jenny's room, which Vastra had reached behind her to open before beginning her withdrawal.

“Why don't I stay in your room?” Jenny had suggested aloud, both shyly and seductively, as if such a thing could be possible. It had made Vastra's mouth suddenly very dry and her heart begin throbbing in her ears. Delicately, she had tried to extradite herself from Jenny and bid her a demure good night, but the human hadn't taken any of that. She'd pulled back on Vastra's hand and suddenly, they had been together again, bodies exchanging warmth quite directly. It was torture of a type neither had been trained to resist.

“It wouldn't be right,” Vastra had murmured with dwindling control against Jenny's inquisitive lips, “Why would you want such a thing?”

“So I can cinch your corset up in the morning,” Jenny had responded immediately with a deadpan expression. Her hands, however, slyly insinuated themselves along the top of Vastra's bodice. Struggling to regain control of the situation, she had taken ahold of Jenny's wayward fingers and clutched them to her heart.

“I didn't think you would be so eager to be mated,” she had whispered, now curling a stray hair behind Jenny's ear, a sign of easy affection.

“Why wait, my love? What is there to wait _for_?” Jenny had been nearly—but not quite-- pleading. “Don't you want me too?”

There were those eyes again, skewering Jenny right through the chest like a spear of lightning. “You know I do. I more than want you.” She had considered her words carefully, while Jenny had begun to melt at her last ones. “Is it not...unseemly for a young maiden to be bedded out of order? It isn't right. I am charged with protecting you, not aiding your perversion.”

She had been so serious that Jenny had not been able to tease back or even be offended. “Madame, there's little precedence for what's between us.” Their arms wound around each other in unison.

“All the more reason for me to take this seriously. I am not some cad who...what is the phrase? Steals the cow and gets the milk for free?”

“Did...do you just call me a cow?” Jenny had sputtered, now somewhat offended despite her even greater willingness to allow Vastra any impropriety she might imagine.

“Well, if recollection serves, I suppose I am still paying you...” Vastra had trailed off, momentarily distracted, earning her a painless little swat about her scalp ridges from Jenny. She'd hissed reflexively, but without any anger. “Please wait, my dearest,” her voice had become longing, and again they rested their foreheads together, which Jenny had begun to interpret as a Silurian gesture of sincerity.

“How long?” had been Jenny's agonized response.

“Trust in me,” had been Vastra's only answer, kissing her face, but not her mouth, again and again. “I must make this right. For you, the love we share, will you wait, Jenny?”

“Of course,” Jenny had fired back more fiercely than anticipated. As a reward now, Vastra had kissed her deeply, breathing into her as she did so, as if supplying her with life itself. Unable to resist, Jenny had flicked her tongue against Vastra's as they parted, and found herself abruptly against the door frame, with long strong fingers stroking, squeezing, and faintly scratching her everywhere while her pelvis was ground against with unimaginable pressure. She had reached up then, and slid her fingers over Vastra's cheeks, head ridges, and the back of her skull where the armored scales resembled plate armor, drawing a different hissing from the Silurian that had everything to do with their shared frustration.

She was let go at that moment. “Waiting, my love,” had been Vastra's gasped, olivine-blushed words, and Jenny had nodded her agreement and backed into her room. Their eyes had met and held in intense unspoken words until the door had shut between them.

It was in reflection of this that Jenny now noticed that one of her curtains had been faintly pulled back and the sun peered in on her bureau, upon which was a simple card of parchment. Here was a note in Vastra's noble and swooping script that read only, “ _Dinner at sunset, dress beautifully, meet in the greenhouse—V_.” Her initial was practically a monogram, a check mark with stylization. It bore the scent, faintly, of roses.

Inhaling deeply of the sensual delight, Jenny gleefully darted over to her nearest chest of drawers to look for what she might wear. It was a specific scent here on this card. She got the computer out and waved the scented note over the sensors. Alien technology was so useful, even if impersonal. It identified as Dhanal Ward, the oil of a distinct thirty-petaled flower called the damask rose, a popular import from the Arabian kingdoms.

She noted with dismay that she had nothing in this style, like the harem-style pants Vastra often wore, but a quick study of the native dress featured in _1001 Nights_ gave her some inspiration. Clearly Vastra didn't want to be distracted in her plans, so Jenny set to her own work, which would take most of the day to make reality.

 

When the sun was dipping, looking a little earlier than expected due to the industrial smog that she disdained so much, Vastra put the finishing touches on the scene she had set and remained standing, leaning upon her fore-sword as she rearranged the fragrant shaved wood incense. It was faint to her, so she knew it would be even lighter to Jenny's senses, which is what she had intended. There were other scents to smell this night, and this was but one note of the sensory sonata she had meticulously composed. Fate was merciful now, as she did not wait long before a familiar and alluring silhouette appeared in the door. She held her breath as it opened.

She could not exhale; could scarcely breathe at all, once she beheld her heart's desire now, framed in the door, with the soft light of the evening like a halo around her. Her hair had been left down, pulled back only half in the back, framing her face, and cascading over her shoulders, which were bare, but for a very thin scarf that wisped its way off of her head as she approached and settled here like a breath. It would have been enough for Vastra to gaze at Jenny's cherubic face all night, those eyes caught in dreamy candle light, dark, and yet almost luminous unto themselves, that delicate and regal nose, and only lightly reddened, soft lips which she had so often kissed recently, accented as usual by the asymmetry of her beauty mark.

The vision did not end there, however, so Vastra looked down slightly and took in the rest. She was wearing only a light, white dress, which had no sleeves, or neck, and was long but without much structure of its own, instead alternately hugging and flowing about the natural shape of Jenny's body. Her feet were bare, but as she stepped, there was the glint of gold in the form of a fine gold chain around her left ankle, as if begging to be addressed. Only very faintly did she smell of the damask rose, as if in consideration for Vastra's senses, while at the same time acknowledging that she had gotten the hint.

“You brighten the room considerably, my dear,” Vastra finally managed to tell her.

The scene for Jenny was equally surreal and she did not respond right away. It seemed out of a novel. The only lights were largish oil lamps set on a low table, casting the whole room in a warm, orange-gold glow with long, soft shadows. Vastra stood to the side, still and statuesque as was her fashion, dressed as if for battle, complete with her beloved swords. If Jenny had ever once found her look roguish, she now found it distinctly romantic. It was thematically unfeminine, masculine even, as it covered some of her more subtle features and accentuated her fighter's poses. Yet, it was also colored richly and marked her as a warrior; more than that, a warrior queen. Her great and lovely head with its ridges and spines and shiny scales resembling at once an exotic headdress and a crown was magnificent.

She tore her eyes from her love with an ache of desire and surveyed the arrangement before her. There were many rugs, including the Persian from the parlor that had also once been mounted over her windows that one time. Also, were many pillows of various shapes and sizes, some trimmed with soft tassels, and embroidered with imported silk thread, all arranged on the ground near the table upon the thick rugs. There were no chairs so Jenny surmised that they would be eating while lounging much like those people in the East were said to. There was a weaving of scents present, savory and sweet, each telling a harmonious story of cooked oils, spices, cheeses, and other items that Jenny imagined were under the several covered trays upon the table, but for the life of her, could not name.

“I have something for you,” Vastra broke the silence, picking up a carafe of some sort as she poured a distinctly red liquid into a delicate blown glass cup with a dainty ear.

“Oh God, what is that?” Jenny asked with a sinking feeling of flashback as she eyed the liquid.

“You've probably guessed that it's blood,” Vastra's face lifted into an expression of mirth.

“Silurian ritual,” Jenny nodded, “to strengthen me for mating, was it?”

Vastra poured herself a cup as well. “So you remember that. Well, as you like,” she answered noncommittally.

Jenny didn't want to spoil the decidedly sensual mood but her stomach was turning a bit upon remembering the last time she had been offered such. She had grown beyond the idea of Vastra consuming it, and had never been particularly weak-stomached herself, but this... “It isn't human, is it?” she hazarded, reaching for it as if she would partake even if Vastra replied in the affirmative. She had been courted recently as a human, so she was not above a Silurian custom now, save for this.

“Heavens no! What do you take me for?” Vastra cried out in alarm, and Jenny breathed a premature sigh of relief. “'Tis the Queen's cocker spaniel.”

Jenny nearly choked and snatched her hand away from the cup as though that was somehow worse. “Are you _serious_?” she shrilled at Vastra, who sipped from her own cup, nonchalantly.

“It has to be special,” Vastra explained gently, “not just any old murderer would do, you see, and lions were woefully out of season. The trouble I went through to get this, though, it might as well have been.”

“Are you serious?” Jenny repeated, incredulously, only then to notice that Vastra was grinning over the rim of her cup. “Oh I see, you're having a go at me! What is it already then?”

“Have trust in me, and try it,” Vastra purred with unusual patience. “Goodness Jenny, don't just stand there looking frightened.”

Without speaking again, Jenny sat down beside Vastra and picked up the cup. She touched it. It was cold. She sipped gingerly. “What is this?” she marveled as a sweet flavor of fruit met her tongue. She fell silent once again as Vastra leaned forward and kissed her, letting her taste the drink again, suddenly even sweeter.

“It is Arabian wine. Pre-Muslim, prepared for sultans from raisins and dates,” Vastra spoke against her mouth, stealing one more kiss before withdrawing. “Can you trust me now?” She purred in amusement.

The rest of the meal was beyond her experience, Jenny decided, as Vastra introduced her to many foreign edibles that she had never even imagined. There was soft fluffy bread, flat and warm, which was given to her with shanks of rosemary lamb and paste-like dips of chickpeas with paprika and sesame. She loved the cool yogurt with cucumbers, and balked at the eggplant dish at first, but of course it was also delicious. The fact that Vastra fed her many bites of each with adoring delicacy added to Jenny's hunger, and she exhibited this by deliberately nipping and licking her fingertips, asking for more of everything, including her host.

They digested their meal leisurely, leaning against a training crate draped over with a length of cloth, facing one another. Jenny leaned upon Vastra's bent knee, and crept her fingers into the folds of her clothing.

“Women of this age are so conservative,” Vastra mused idly, her fingers now feeding Jenny a bit of honey-drenched baklava, a delightful pastry of thin filo dough with nuts. Her other hand trailed gently along the line of Jenny's exposed cleavage, pushing the scarf from her shoulders.

“As opposed to...cave women? Silurian women?” Jenny giggled, tingly from the wine.

“Mm,” Vastra grunted by way of agreement, “Don't misunderstand. I always appreciate civility-- there is precious little of it in the world of apes-- but civility does not equal modesty, nor is it equal to shame.” she caressed now the slope of Jenny's neck, and watched her close her eyes. _Go on_ , she seemed to say. “For instance, in how many ways, by your people, have I encouraged you to sin?” Jenny looked up now concerned, but also intrigued. Vastra kissed her hand. “I fear I have profaned you. Killing, neglecting men, and encouraging your...immodesty.”

“I like the way I am now,” Jenny assured her. “And what do you care of the Church of England anyway, Madame Silurian?”

“I don't, not for me at least, but I dislike the idea of drawing an innocent girl away from the foundations of her faith, not to mention the body of society.” Vastra brushed her hair away from her cheek.

“Perhaps God spoke to your people first.” Jenny's grasp slid lower and a mixture of the alcohol and curiosity distracted her completely. “Why do Silurians have breasts if you aren't mammals?” she suddenly asked with a giggle.

Now it was Vastra's turn to glow a very bright green in addition to her mysterious, still-present red tinge. “We may not be mammals exactly like you,” she began, clearing her throat uneasily, “but we, despite our disdain, are, in fact, _proto-mammalian_ in nature. Highly adaptable nutrient storage and another example of convergent evolution, especially in times of famine or premature birth...”

If anything she'd said or would ever say was meant to arouse Jenny, “proto-mammallian” had never been the term she would have picked, but suddenly, like a cat upon a mouse, Jenny was upon her, fully in her lap, investigating the fastenings of her vest. “Let me see them!” her demeanor was bolder on wine, but her voice, expression, eyes, and mind, were untouched. She had had much less than Vastra realized, which was a pleasant surprise.

“Wait, I have something for you,” Vastra murmured demurely against the inside of Jenny's wrist as she tried to push her back and failed.

“Another thing? Madame you spoil me,” Jenny responded distractedly as she managed to pull open the vest, forcing Vastra to keep both hands on her shirt to prevent it from following. “Hah, no Jenny. You got distracted by the glass of non-blood. I don't mean to court you the Silurian way--”

“Thank the Goddess,” Jenny replied, still not listening fully as she found the waistband of Vastra's trousers and the tiniest bit of misplaced pressure sent her heart pounding wildly like a galloping horse. If she didn't reassert control over this situation...she didn't want to think about it, lest she give in to her own instincts which fought to dominate her intellect.

She had miscalculated though, and Jenny was going all in with every bit of her attention and intention. She was trapped against some boxes and a folded training mat as Jenny slinked forward upon her. Again was a hot surge of blood rushing through every component of her body and Vastra pressed her lips together, schooling her features into an expression of dignity. “ _Jenny_ ,” came her voice, less firm than she had wanted as she turned her face from the beautiful woman's probing, relentless fingers and soft lips. And dizzying scent. Good Goddess, she was even more comely up close. Vastra felt intoxicated and not at all from the wine. Her soft, secret parts ached, demanding something she was not sure she could give.

“Ma'am,” whimpered Jenny, her little white teeth looking as sharp as her own, framed by those rose-colored lips. That little pink tongue that loved to tease her so much flashed out for a second to wet them, and then without warning, there came a cry from her open and wanting mind. < _Vastra_! >

The Silurian nearly broke right there but it was imperative that she not; that she explain in full. “Jenny, my love, no. We can't.” She submitted to a desperate kiss and there was Jenny's tongue, a mere distraction of desire while her hands busied themselves with the ties at Vastra's waist. Oh how she yearned to feel that mouth everywhere. She felt like she was burning and drowning all at once, but she pressed back on Jenny now as she struggled to ignore the way her mouth had a mind of its own and sought Jenny's lips over and over.

“Jenny, you don't understand. For us, desire runs much deeper, and violently in the blood,” Vastra forced herself to say, struggling to maintain her composure, “It's too dangerous for us. I can maybe do things to you, but--”

<Please> No arguments, no assurances. Vastra might have expected a demand or even a threat to come before what she had gotten-- a plea. Not just a plea by vocal cords and seduction, but a naked admission of need from the deepest part of Jenny's psyche. It was a plea of her whole being, and freed by the intensity of her love for Vastra. <Please.> There it was again with all the trust she could imagine. She was unafraid, and completely secure in whatever Vastra's desires or drive might be, and this is what finally broke her.

Feebly, she tried one more time. <Let us retire to bed. You can go and I'll-->

<No, my love, right here,> came a rush of heated want, and the last inhibitor within Vastra came wholly unanchored. The primal creature of instinct that dwelled within, chained by her discipline freed itself and roared.

There wasn't even time to gasp before Vastra's hand came around her throat and the other, into her hair. Her head was pulled back roughly, exposing her from her chin to the upward swell of her breasts just before teeth sank into neck. It wasn't enough to draw blood, but later she would surely be bruised on the spot. Right now, she was too thrilled, too excited, to care. She cared even less as claws took ahold of her dress on either side and, with barely a grunt of effort from her lover, simply _pulled_. Layers of silk and thread shredded like tissue paper and at once she was exposed to the waist, the night air drawing up her soft pink nipples like tiny flower buds to light.

Resistance never even occurred to Jenny, who found herself tossed upon the pillows and lush coverlets that had been piled there. Vastra's plundering mouth was now upon the nearly-translucent flesh of her breasts. One was squeezed, spilling out of her grasp, while the other was ravished between teeth and lips, sucking, tasting, and craving. Feebly, she did push up against her lover, looking for any way to relieve the pressure between her thighs. Each draw on her blushing nipple, first the right and now the left, was like a thread of pure nerves tugging against her womb. She felt slightly light-headed.

Vastra didn't hesitate, or even slow down to look. Hands left scratches over Jenny's back, sides, and stomach, a trail of conquest on a map of warm flesh, a heartbeat before there was a louder ripping noise and now Jenny was bared, wet, and begging before her mistress's storm of lust. As if to answer her unspoken wish-- and perhaps she had indeed read it-- Vastra thrust against her, jarringly hard, and Jenny didn't care that the Silurian was still fully clothed. She craved this relief, however slight, from the throbbing of tight nerves. She felt herself rise on a bubble of sensation now, clutched in preternatural strength as Vastra continued to feed upon her flesh and grind against her secret place below.

Wanton noises left her mouth, mostly unintelligible, with a smattering of curses, promises, and prayers. Chief among these was Vastra's name, over and over. The first, small orgasm was not a surprise, though, that it was purely from Vastra's mouth upon the fragile innocence of her nipples, was.

The second peak would take her entirely off guard. She hadn't even been quite finished with the first, which had been a lucky appetizer, when at once, Vastra moved the hand from her other breast and slipped it swiftly between her legs.

They were not so different after all, Vastra realized. She had known this intellectually but in the heat of the moment, her instincts were all the led her. Anatomy books and memories were drowned out in the rush of her want. Her two middle fingers found the bundle of nerves there, blushing beneath their hood, and greeted them briefly-- enough to make Jenny's heart rate spike-- before they moved downward, following the slick path, and found her very ready to receive them. Normally she might have paused, either to tease Jenny or to make sure she was all right, but Jenny was wailing and gyrating mindlessly beneath her, and her own lust was fearfully savage. She plunged within, following the upper boundary in its natural curve, pressuring every inch of sensitive nerves until she was fully, and utterly inside.

Jenny's orgasm was instant and violent, her mouth and mind screaming out all at once as if in pain, but squeezing Vastra within herself, while her mind expounded formlessly in its sensory release, sharing it with her lover, and unintentionally dragging her right over the razor's edge as well.

Vastra's answering cry was a roar in her ears as she thrust into Jenny a final time, and rode out her own sensory implosion, clutching the human to her desperately. Teeth sought flesh, found it, and pierced it even, but no one paid any heed as the current of pleasure transported them to another side of sensation.

Breathless and weak, Jenny let her eyes shut for what she anticipated would be a post-coital nap before it was finally her turn to explore, but was alarmed to find herself being worked into a kneeling position above Vastra now. Dizzily, her mind asked a question and was answered very simply.

<Brace yourself on the table now.> Vastra was more like herself now, and less like the raging creature of a few minutes past, but there was still a dangerous, ravenous look upon her. Jenny wasn't sure if she was really comfortable with what was going to happen, but at the same time, she had no desire to deny her love a single thing, so she was obedient and Vastra positioned herself beneath her.

 _No, this isn't something polite ladies do_ , was Jenny's last thought. She released every care immediately, less than a heartbeat later when Vastra's forked tongue teased and then battered her nether lips, her mouth now fully on her, and around her, and in her as she searched and found her mark without delay.

<I must taste you,> came Vastra's feverish voice in her mind, her only warning for an experience that Jenny could never have prepared for, as her long strong tongue sought and was granted entrance. For someone who had never been bedded, that she now found herself so impaled at first frightened her just a little, but desire and her trust and love of Vastra won. She let go, and rode with reckless abandon, her thoughts unguarded and spurring Vastra on.

She was so hot and sweet. Vastra memorized every detail of her lover, opening her eyes to watch her writhe, the smooth mound of her sex, pale, flat stomach, high, tight, quivering breasts, and the length of pale, now slightly bruised throat, her head thrown back and a dark curtain of hair tossed as if by a strong wind. She was more beautiful than Vastra had words for. <You are mine,> she snarled in their minds.

Jenny did not give an immediate sign of comprehension except suddenly, as she arched her back and prepared to come, her hand found the waistband of Vastra's pants. Nimbly, and without needing to see, she laid her hand flat and slid down inside. Vastra was so close to her own limit just from the sensation of having Jenny, that she bucked in both shock and unexpected ecstasy as Jenny discovered her as well, and took control.

 _More, more, more_ , were Jenny's only thoughts until she heard Vastra faintly.

<Say my name, Jenny.> And she did, crying out in her mind because she couldn't form words with her mouth as she shuddered, and a deep ocean wave of feelings, both physical and mental crashed over them together. Jenny, who had never imagined that it could be this way, felt much like a deep sea diver, fully submerged in liquid pressure. When finally she was released, she was lost in the abyss beyond it, falling limp and nearly lifeless in Vastra's waiting arms.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I split this original chapter in two so that the reader could first digest Jenny's deflowering before we move onto matters of Vastra's experience. It is all written though, so I will post immediately. This is where I FUBAR'd the last time and deleted the whole fic. (Still kicking myself for it-- you guys gave me such great feedback and 300+ hits in under a week. I LOVE YOU.)
> 
> Also to note, I did a LOT of googling to research lizard anatomy, evolution, mating rituals, etc. The things I do for the love of fic. Ahhh.


	7. Partner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vastra lets go and is taken by Jenny. A new, unbreakable bond is made between them.

Part VI

 

When she regained consciousness, she was in bed. Not even her bed, but Vastra's. Also, she was without a stitch of clothing. Alarmed, she was about to sit up when she realized that her lover was there with her, clad in a nightgown, watching over her with a dreamy mixture of concern and tenderness. <Are you all right?>

<It wasn't a dream,> Jenny sighed. She looked down at her body as she felt the tenderness between her legs and in both breasts...and everywhere else. She looked like a brand-new apprentice once more, covered in faint bruises and shallow scrapes from fingernails and teeth. She blanched at the sight, and understood Vastra's attentiveness.

<I have treated you already,> Vastra informed her lovingly, <I won't let this happen again. I was so rough. My love...> she stroked Jenny's hair gingerly as if she would be rejected. Jenny did nothing of the sort, however, and pulled even closer to her, nuzzling the underside of her chin. <I have something for you,> she said finally, when it seemed that Jenny wasn't going to move.

“Another thing? What is this about?” Jenny groaned and rolled onto her back, enjoying, belatedly, the way Vastra's eyes grew large and dark when they beheld her bared breasts.

<I only ever had one thing for you, my love. You keep distracting me from giving it to you.> Vastra scolded in jest.

“I can't help it,” Jenny complained. She mounted Vastra quickly and yanked open just the neck of the nightgown and getting a glimpse of skin before the lizard woman could throw her gently back down on the bed. “Your scales are back to normal!”

Vastra flushed a deep emerald. “Well, I suppose I have satisfied my needs,” she offered vaguely and drew a laugh from Jenny, who mischievously tried to wrestle with her again. “Now now dear.”

Jenny thought nothing of the way Vastra had grasped her hand until she felt something slide onto it. She sat up curiously and looked down. Upon her ring finger was a ring of fine wire with a rosy tinge like Turkish gold, twisted intricately and exquisitely to resemble complicated knotwork that seemed almost Pictish, but not. It was distinctly angled and symmetrical. She could only guess that it was Silurian in design. It was not exactly shaped like a woman's ring, despite its beauty, and was broad and flat all the way around, though sized for her finger perfectly. Set in the middle, however, was something she had never seen. It appeared to be a very light green-gold stone the thickness and size of her smallest fingernail by the look of it, with light striations of color in an iridescent dance just beneath the surface. What was it? The inside of an abalone shell? Perhaps a shard of glass? She was immediately captivated by the mysterious jewel and turned it this way and that. “Is this what they call an opal?” she guessed.

Vastra ignored this and instead gently stroked the metal. “This is Silurian gold that we use as a super conductor in our electronics. It is an alloy I doubt humans will ever devise. It is customary to give a devotion gift to seal the statement of one's intention. I hope this is acceptable.” She seemed so shy, and looked to Jenny's hand now instead of her eyes.

<It is beautiful!> Jenny cried out in her joyous mind, filling Vastra with her emotion. Then, she recalled something and returned her hands to Vastra's night gown. Their eyes met slowly as Jenny peeled it down, off the neck, and now off the shoulders, but not quite enough to bare her chest entirely. Yes, just there, right over her heart, was a gap in the armor, where instead, there was a small, mostly healed scab. Jenny's eyes flew up and asked a question.

<I wanted you to have a piece of me,> Vastra explained as her mind filled with snapshot images of the process. Separating it, the slightly painful extraction, the salt bath and refining process, the buffing, and finally the setting... Jenny instantly understood that it was not as simple as picking a scab but had been apparently a ritualized craft among her people. Suddenly, it had even more meaning, and she looked at it with renewed awe. <I wish for us to be married, Jenny,> Vastra's voice came in her mind, solemn and earnest as ever, her blue eyes steady and certain. <No more hiding, no more taking without giving. We will be one. Always.>

Now Jenny found that she was weeping, openly, perhaps for the first time in Vastra's presence, and wrapped her arms around her where she was enveloped by her scent. “Who would marry us, my darling?”

<We shall be married by my people before the Old Gods-- tomorrow even, if you consent.> Vastra assured her.

“Then yes, a hundred, a thousand times yes. Yes!” Jenny exclaimed in exhilaration. When their lips met this time, it was electric, but more than that, filled with certainty, all fears evaporating like morning mist.

Satisfied, Vastra began to toy now with Jenny's tender pink nipples, and draw them toward her mouth. She was surprised when Jenny pushed her away and took over. She had never been simply been taken. To lie back and accept and simply be was foreign to her. Yet, here was Jenny now, as innocent as a child, reverent as she helped Vastra divest herself of her nightgown.

It was white and virginal, and so modest, and Jenny felt herself swell with anticipation as she opened each remaining button and bared Vastra inch by inch, leisurely perusing her mysterious body as Vastra studiously looked away in self-consciousness. Here again was the missing scale. Jenny kissed it as she pulled the fabric down, and glanced over to the bicep where she inexplicably found a bite mark matching her mouth exactly. “It didn't hurt,” Vastra assured her, and Jenny kissed this as well before continuing the languid disrobing.

She was paler here, from the throat down over her chest and stomach. It transitioned smoothly from the deep serpentine green of her arms and face to a paler shade of peridot and finally to almost a yellow like gold hammered parchment thin. The palest points were nearly white. The flesh was also softer here, the scales, finer, more sensitive, judging by the way Vastra squirmed and trembled beneath her touch. She admired all of this for a moment, with both eyes and swooping, gentle hands, before pulling the gown away toward the sides and showing Vastra's body entirely.

Her breasts were large mounds, slightly more than Jenny's, which was surprising, but interesting. They were high and firm, and of a milky green like jade in color. As Jenny brought her mouth and hands to each, just to test them, she was delighted to discover that they were similarly sensitive. She used the back of her knuckle to trace a path to encircle the areolas which were totally flat and deeper green than the surrounding tissue. Upon manipulating both gently, patiently, she found that the actual nipples seemed to be inverted, hidden, and thus protected. Ever so slowly, they stirred, as they were exposed to the cool air and Jenny's unceasing attention. Eager to see them, she bent and deliberately blew gently across one and then the other, urging a stifled moan from Vastra as they began to present themselves obediently. When Jenny let her lips touch one, Vastra's hands flew up to grasp her hips hard, and bit her lip as she braced in anticipation, but did not more.

One jeweled nub disappeared into Jenny's mouth. She wasn't quite as sensitive as Jenny here, but the mechanics were all similar, and even moreso from disuse. Somewhere down there in a place that was still unexamined by Jenny, beneath the thin sheet, there was a flash of fire.

Sensing that Vastra could be aroused but not coaxed to orgasm by her nipples alone, Jenny kept moving, pulling at the bed coverings while Vastra accommodated her. She was a sculpture of muscles and scales, lean and powerful, but wriggling and sighing like a mere human as Jenny kissed a course from sternum to belly button across planes of firm abs, to rounded, defined hips. She knew Vastra was trying to hold back now, perhaps to make up for their concussive first encounter earlier, so she decided to have fun and avoid that area for now, and instead lavish attention at her bare feet and shapely ankles and calves. Kissing, lightly biting, then soothing the areas behind her knees and the insides of both thighs, she took her time tantalizing and building the anticipation, drawing it out as long as they could bear. When finally she found herself at the soft area where torso delineated from leg, right above where her rock hard buttocks also intersected, she paused.

Vastra whined, a very soft, high pitched complaint, but Jenny took a moment to observe, and paid no mind to how her partner squirmed under scrutiny. They were not appreciably different here. Vastra had an opening, yes, but the lips were not lined with fat as it would with a human. As such, they were smooth, secretive, and laid closed until Jenny parted them carefully. Ah, it was here that they were truly the same-- almost exactly, and Jenny, based on what Vastra had done to her, knew what to do.

 _The little ape is a torturer_ , Vastra realized as Jenny began her languid exploration of her hidden self. Long strokes followed by gentler, shorter ones whet her appetite for more of this delicious act, stoking flames until Vastra's mental landscape was a field of blooming bonfires, impossible to block out. A deep, guttural moan that sounded like Jenny's name broke free of her, pining, desperate, passionate, as her desire reached a fever pitch.

No, more like a flash point, she was forced to concede, as Jenny looked her dead in the eye a moment later, an instant before claiming her with her mouth and effortlessly bypassing every physical and mental defense in one push. Completely in control, adept, and fearless, Jenny steered Vastra, now receptive and malleable, as she rode three high peaks under her lover's attentions before she felt something new building from within, much like the first but more than just waves now. It was a tidal bore that drew all of her energy and tension down from each extremity and even her head, leaving her dizzy and disoriented. She closed her eyes as her universe flooded with color. All of what was so essentially Vastra, her strength, confidence, power, and even her vanity all left in a rush and centered on Jenny, whose mouth guided it all in a symphony of delight until finally, when Vastra could truly bear nothing further and madness claimed the source of her being, she released it, and all of it rushed back ten fold into every pore, every bone, and fiber of muscle. Into skin and teeth it went, like kerosene, until at last, burning, Vastra was alight in a maelstrom of light, color, and love. Her admission ripped anew from the crevasses of her mind as unfiltered and unashamed as that of a young child with her favorite treat. <I love you, I am yours.> she cried to her mate as Jenny rose above her, and answered in kind just as the final release opened its maw anew and swallowed them both. Exhausted and glowing, they collapsed in a blanket-swathed embrace and lost themselves in one another's dreams.

When Vastra opened her eyes, Jenny was absent from her side, but resting on the pillow beside her was a locket the size of a small pillbox with very fine glass on one side. It appeared to be custom, and assembled by hand as she scrutinized the tooling on the metal rim, hinge, and clasp. She looked through the glass and resting there within was an ever-so-slight lock of Jenny's deep chestnut hair. “Don't forget I read up on Silurian customs as well. I've been waiting for you. I hope my devotion gift is suitable. J” read the note that had been folded beneath it, smelling lightly floral. Vastra clutched it to her heart and looped the chain around her neck where it it rested between her breasts.

A noise at the door revealed Jenny, now dressed, but in her best battle clothes, sword at her hip. Though queerly accented, words came from her betrothed that were recognizably her own language. “ _Well? Is it not our wedding day?_ ” She smiled then that infectious, youthful human smile and held up Vastra's finest battle regalia, pressed and ready for her approval.

 _She really has been studying_ , Vastra marveled with great amazement. “Quickly now,” she laughed, “Help me with that corset,” and purred generously as her bride-to-be hurried to oblige.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, we have reached the end! I may add more at a later time, perhaps, but also to look out for will be some one-shots and stand-alones that tie-in with this work. I think of them as like "deleted scenes" or peripheral adventures.
> 
> I want to just say that in all probability, Vastra and Jenny do NOT get married that day because some adventure or another will take precedence, but it will happen fairly soon after this last scene. I will return to explore it at some point.
> 
> Oh, before I forget, "Turkish gold" is kind of an older term but refers to a little bit of copper mixed into gold to make it slightly rosy. The Silurians in my story, use an alloy that looks like rose gold as we might know it, but the other materials are a mystery.
> 
> The theme in titling, by the way, is not an accident. They are all "one word" because I wanted to present these things to the reader as intimate "truths"...and perhaps we will also see Jenny respond to the one-word test in the future. I never explored the actual hiring process and I have become intrigued by it.
> 
> There will be another chapter following this, but I will be recounting all of your wise and kind comments that I saved before I stupidly deleted the original version of this story. I wanted to show you guys (and other readers) that I truly treasure your feedback.


	8. Feedback

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I have screenshots of several comments I saved (thank God), so I will transcribe them here for my own reference as well as yours. I really treasure your words to me, and I don't want them to be lost forever. Sadly I did not back up my responses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My responses are in brackets.

IrisSteth:

1: This was a lovely read! Excellently paced and their personalities captured perfectly. I found myself picturing the story as I read along and the only thing that broke me out of the spell was the fact that I ran out of words to read! Please continue. I will happily wait for however long you need to post the follow up story and chapter.

2: Written words will fail to accurately describe the goofy smile on my face but I will try all the same.

You know that half smile/smirk you get when you read something involving your OTP and you have that sense of 'dear god you two are so cute, shut up and kiss already!!' That's my current smile.

This chapter covered so much ground but I wasn't lost at all. There were a few times when you missed the s in she or r in her but beyond that I don't recall any other glaring editing errors (and the ones I mentioned aren't that bad)

I'm glad for a second chapter and love how you explore and explain Jenny's telepathic ability. It's an area I always want to read more of.

Well done and I await more updates (but don't feel the need to post them all at once just for me!)

3\. Splendid chapter as always. I adore how you portray their relationship - because both care so much for the other that they are willing to wait and resist their more primal urges simply to ensure the other is totally ready.

It's not that I dislike the sudden 'I love you and now we have sex' trope -- but I feel it can be (and sometimes is) unrealistic or out of character.

Jenny is still young, a virgin with at least one (if not more, as we don't know about her past while living with whores) traumatic incident in which individuals tried forcing themselves on her without her concent. Vastra is keenly aware of this (what with their first meeting, the reoccurring nightmare, and her question regarding wheather or not Jenny had been touched by Doctor Cream) so I think Vastras proposal to wait is not only sensible, but for the best.

Jenny was caught up in the moment. I do not think she would have regretted the act if it had occurred in this scene... But I think some of it was hormonal and 'we just said the L word' hype. I am not trying to say Jenny couldn't control herself, more I think her lack of experience in this area has her relying on stories she's been told and it is quite likely that she hasn't thought through all the details of their first time. The cheif reason for this being she has no idea what lays beneath Vastra's skirts.

Vastra has at least a general idea about anatomical differences xD

I also enjoy your explanation for why Jenny is still a maid even though she's Vastra's equal. I've always thought that Jenny was slightly fond of the homework (maybe not all of it and not all the time, but she doesn't hate it). I always imagine her as a tinkerer, she fiddles in Vastras lab and with tech they have taken from alien threats... And she developes things with them. Examples: the bomb sheild from the snowman, and her diagnosis gauntlet from deep breath. I think she also has created a chemical that removes blood stains from juuuust about everything. She's always surrounded by spectacular things... So she thinks of the mundane house chores as a break from the extraordinary. It keeps her grounded and is a way to collect her thoughts.

Anyway that's just my long winded take on everything.

Can't wait for the next update!

4\. I am very glad to know that my interpretation is what you were going for! Its a sign of your abilities as a writer to be able to allow the reader to read into your story and get into your head (while still letting them come up with their own takes on the events).

I know as a writer I crave nearly constant feedback -- and reading a comment wherein someone breaks down my writing but from their point of view is one of the best ways to judge how things are going (plus it is super fun to read). So as long as you don't mind my long-windedness I shall continue to write snippets of my take on your writing as my free time permits.

Ohh, tinkering Jenny! Yessss. Yes gooood. I've always loved that she's been able to pick locks. I never get tired of people writing their own takes on the story about how she learned the skill.

As for 'hoping' I will enjoy your next chapter -- so long as the two of them are breathing by the end of it I'll be happy.

If you're worried about how people will judge your smut writing capabilities -- I can only say that there's a first time for everything. Writing is hard, writing smut is harder still. You've built their romance up well so far - so I can see how you might be worried about the final delivery -- but honestly so long as you write what you think the two of them would do and follow your own muse (fickle and full of doubt though it may be, assuming it is at all like mine) just keep writing.

If you really don't like how it comes out, you can always go back an edit it later! But as a reader (and a lover of the Green Tea pairing) I'm willing to wait for as long as it takes for you, dear author, to feel like you're comfortable putting up the next chapter.

Trust me, I know how easy it is to want to appease the masses while they are still interested and engaged -- but our fandom is a hearty and patient one.

Anyway - I could just be completely reading your reply wrong (its entirely possible) so if I am then my bad xD, but if that IS something you were worried about then know you've got lots of support from some strange faceless person off the internet whom loves Jenny/Vastra as much as you do. Little comfort, but its all I've got.

[You have been one of my biggest sources of encouragement EVER!!!!!!! Thank you so much for your support.]

Lyzzardbrain:  
Truly wonderful Vastra Jenny origin story. Looking forward to more

[Thank you so much! I hope I won't disappoint.]

 

VictorianLesbian  
Thank you for your story! I read it all in one sitting and all I have to say is WOW. It's been a while since I found a story as captivating as I did yours. There are just a couple of minor things wrong with it, like the coming of age that in their time period was at 21 and not 18yo and some few other minor canon discrepancies, but I guess that was just the canon nazi in me that took me a step back from being completely and utterly captivated by your otherwise excellent narrative. Again, thank you. The fandom trully needed this story. I look forward to reading many more pieces from you!!

[You are so good at fic and I love your work. Total respect. I will continue to refine this story and those that follow. I hope you will be pleased with my next offerings.]


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